
N.= NETHERLANDS 

B.= BELGIUM 

S.= SWITZERLAND 



Uncertain boundaries — •-- 




THE NEW DIVISIONS 
OF 

EUROPE 



EUROPE OF TO-DAY 



EUROPE OF TO-DAY 



^ -.9^ BY 

J. F. UNSTEAD, M.A., D.Sc. 

RECOGNISED TEACHER OF GEOGRAPHY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 

AUTHOR OF " PRACTICAL GEOGRAPHY," JOINT AUTHOR OF 
"general AND REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY" AND 

"essentials of world geography" 



NEW YORK 

MOFFAT YARD AND COMPANY 

1922 



^c\6 



A 



y 




" Let travellers cross seas and deserts merely to measure the height 
of a mountain, to describe the cataract of a river, . . . but what advan- 
tage can accrue to a philosopher from such accounts, who is desirous of 
understanding the human heart, who seeks to know the meti of every 
country, who desires to discover those differences which result from 
climate, religion, education, prejudice, and partiality ? . . . . 

"Confucius observes that it is the duty of the learned to unite 
society more closely, and to persuade men to become citizens of the 
world." — Oliver Goldsmith ; T^e Citizen of the World (1760). 

"^i O \ 5.. io 



PREFACE 

This book is written with a twofold purpose. It en- 
deavours to give an account of the " New Europe " 
which will enable the general reader to understand the 
changes which have taken place as a result of the war, 
and the problems which confront Europe at the present 
time. 

At the same time it is one of a series of four books 
which together will form a course in geography suitable 
for secondary and day continuation schools. This course 
has been planned in the belief that the chief aims of 
teaching geography are to show the relations between 
man and his environment, and to train young people 
to be intelligent citizens. 

The writer is convinced that an intelligent citizen 
must be so educated as to have a knowledge of the 
various peoples and their problems, together with an 
attitude of mind characterised both by goodwill to the 
peoples and a desire to find a just solution to the problems 
with which his state may be concerned. Hence the 
guiding principle in the writing of these books has been 
to help the readers to a sympathetic understanding of the 
lives of the peoples of our own and other countries. 

In this book it has been convenient to deal with the 
environment — that is, the physical geography — of each of 
the larger regions of Europe in turn, and then to describe 
the social, economic, and political life of each of the 



vi PREFACE 

states included in those larger regions ; the reader 
should, however, recall and revise the physical as he 
studies the human conditions of each state. 

So many aspects of the countries and of the lives of 
the peoples have to be considered that the book cannot 
be in any sense exhaustive ; certain aspects are selected 
and dealt with in connection with each region, and 
details necessarily omitted can be obtained from the 
standard works of reference, among which may be 
mentioned the annual issues of the " Statesman's Year 
Book." 

The subject-matter introduced marks the greatest 
departure from the traditional " geography " in connec- 
tion with those regions of Central and Eastern Europe 
where the war has caused the greatest changes in 
political and economic conditions. 

London, 

March^ 1921. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

From the Old to the New ' . i 

The Peoples of Europe 15 

Northern Europe : Physical . . . . . -25 

The Scandinavian Peoples, Denmark, Sweden, 

Norway, Finland 35 

Central Europe : Northern Section, Physical . . 50 

The Netherlands, Germany, Poland ... 73 

Central Europe: Southern Section, Physical ... 96 

Switzerland, Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Hun- 
gary, Rumania 108 

Western Europe : Physical 137 

France, Belgium 153 

Mediterranean Europe : Physical 166 

Spain, Portugal, Italy, Balkan States . . 182 

Eastern Europe : Physical 210 

The Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia . .217 

Conclusion 237 

Index 243 



LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS 



FIG, PAGB 

The New Divisions of Europe . Front end paper 

1. The Limits of the Ice Sheet 31 

2. The Waterways connected with the Lower Elbe . 53 

3. Graph of Average Temperatures .... 69 

Graph of Average Rainfall 71 

Alpine Routes loi 

Boundary Changes in Central Europe . . .115 
Divisions and Coalfields of France . . . .139 
The Peoples of Central Europe .... 196-7 

The Peoples of Eastern Europe 219 

The New States of Central Europe . Back endpaper 



The maps and diagrams are not intended to supersede, but only to 
supplement, an atlas ; it is assumed that an atlas will be constantly 

used, and this should show, in addition to the political divisions, etc., 
the elevation of the land by shades of colour, and also climatic con- 
ditions and natural vegetation. 



EUROPE OF TO-DAY 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 

The Europe of to-day is very different from the Europe 
of a few years ago : Empires of the past have disappeared 
and RepubUcs have taken their place ; peoples who were 
ruled by other peoples now govern themselves ; the 
boundaries of countries have been greatly altered ; 
states such as Jugo-Slavia and Czecho- Slovakia appear 
on the maps for the first time ; for the first time, too, 
a League of Nations has been formed to prevent war, 
to help nations to work together in various ways, and to 
take under its protection or to administer a number of 
regions which have been removed from the power of 
certain great states. It is, therefore, well to describe 
briefly how and why these changes came about, for 
then the importance and meaning of the new conditions 
can be realized. 

The Outbreak of the Great War. — On June 28th, 
19 14, the Archduke Francis, the heir to the throne of 
Austria-Hungary, was riding through the streets of 
Sarajevo, the chief town of Bosnia in the Balkan Penin- 
sula,* v/hen a bomb was thrown at him. The bomb 

* Before the Great War, Austria and Hungary were joined under 
one ruler and included several large areas inhabited by other peoples ; 
Bosnia is one of these areas in the extreme south of the country. The 
map in Fig. 4 shows the extent of Austria-Hungary and the countries 
which bordered it at this time* 

B 



2 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

exploded and the Archduke and his wife were killed. 
This murder was like a match thrown into a powder 
magazine, for it was the beginning of that greatest of all 
the explosions of history, the war that caused the upheaval 
of nearly all the countries of the world and sacrificed the 
lives of over eight million men. 

The murder was due to the hatred which the people 
of Bosnia and their kinsmen felt for their Austrian rulers. 
The Bosnians belong to the group of people called 
Jugo-Slavs, to which the Serbians also belong, and Bosnia 
had been forcibly annexed by Austria- Hungary years 
before ; moreover, many Serbians feared that Austria 
wished to get power over Serbia also. Austria and Hun- 
gary ruled other peoples akin to the Serbs, and feared 
that Serbia would encourage their kinsm^en to rebel. 
Thus there was mutual fear, and when the Archduke 
was murdered, Austria accused Serbia of helping the 
murderers. There was no evidence of this, but Austria 
demanded that Serbia should make amends and threatened 
war if Serbia did not agree to its conditions, two of which 
would have given Austria power to interfere in the 
government of Serbia itself. Serbia accepted most of 
the conditions, for it was a very weak country as com- 
pared with Austria-Hungary, but proposed that the two 
most objectionable points should be referred to arbitra- 
tion ; Austria refused this and declared war. 

Meanwhile the other powers of Europe had been 
considering the matter, and Russia decided to stand by 
Serbia. The nations seemed all to fear their neighbours 
in one way or another, and Russia feared lest Austria- 
Hungary, which adjoined it on the west, should become 
more powerful by extending its rule over Serbia and so 
including within its realm some millions of people from 
whom taxes might be raised and soldiers conscribed. 
Moreover, the Russians are Slavs, and so belong to the 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 3 

same race and have a similar language to that of the 
Serbians. Russia therefore prepared for war. As 
Russia stood behind Serbia, so Germany stood behind 
Austria, for Germany had promised Austria its support, 
and now declared war on Russia. 

Moreover, as Russia feared Austria, so France feared 
its neighbour Germany, and perhaps with more reason, 
for forty years before Germany had defeated France and 
taken Alsace and Lorraine from her. Consequently 
France and Russia had an agreement to assist each other, 
and thus France was drawn into the conflict and Germany 
at once prepared to attack her. 

This attack could only take place in two districts, 
for most of the frontier between Germany and France 
is highland across which large armies cannot easily pass. 
To the south of the barrier is a narrow gap between 
France and the Swiss mountains, and this gave little 
scope for the movement of such enormous armies as 
Germany had prepared and wished to thrust rapidly 
into France. To the north of the barrier is another 
passage, but it leads through Belgium. Belgium is a 
very small state, and the greater powders, including 
Britain and Prussia,* had guaranteed by treaty that it 
should be a neutral state. Nevertheless, Germany 
began to send troops across Belgian territory, and so 
violated its neutrality, and the Belgian army tried to 
resist the Germans. 

This definitely decided Britain to enter the war, and 
although Britain had no formal and public treaty with 
France to assist her, there had been informal under- 
standings between members of the British and French 
governments. The entry of Britain brought about the 
entry of the British Dominions beyond the seas, among 

* Prussia was the most important of the German states which, in 
1 87 1, combined to foiTn the German Empire. 



4 EUROPE OF TO-BAY 

whom Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Union of 
South Africa are the most important. Also Japan was 
bound by treaty to Britain, and so came into the war. 
Thus almost at a stroke the greater part of Europe, with 
other countries to the most distant regions of the world, 
was plunged into war. 

The War and the Nations. — The navies of Britain 
and its allies were much more powerful than those of 
Germany and Austria-Hungary. Few sea battles were 
fought, but the warships and mercantile ships of the 
Central Powers were driven from the seas, and this was 
a fact of the greatest importance, for it enabled the Allies 
to blockade their enemies. Gradually the blockade was 
made more strict until no goods of any kind could get 
into Germany and Austria-Hungary. Food supplies, 
cotton and other clothing materials, oils and fats, minerals 
of various kinds, which would have been used both for 
warfare and the needs of the civilian population, ceased 
to be imported. This hindered military operations, 
checked manufactures of all kinds, and slowly reduced 
almost the whole population to a state of want and 
poverty. Thus w^ar was no longer confined to the com- 
batants, but women and children suffered terribly even 
before the aircraft, attacking munition works, brought 
almost indiscriminate damage and death to the towns 
where works of this kind were situated. 

Meanwhile the number of countries engaged in the 
war increased. Turkey entered within a few months, 
followed in 19 15 by Italy and Bulgaria. Turkey and 
Bulgaria supported the Central Powers, so that Serbia 
was invaded on each side, and when it was overrun there 
was a complete block of territory under the dominance 
of Germany extending from the North Sea and Baltic 
Sea, through Central Europe and the Balkan Peninsula 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 5 

to South-western Asia, completely cutting off Russia 
from her Western Allies. 

Italy had previously been in alliance with Germany 
and Austria-Hungary, but it was only bound to support 
these countries if they were attacked by others, and 
Italy decided that they had not been attacked and so did 
not join them. On the contrary, it made a secret treaty 
with Britain, France, and Russia, by which it was to receive 
those parts of Austria seized from Italy long before and 
still inhabited by Italians, and also other territories 
belonging to Austria and Turkey but not Italian in 
their population. In 191 6 Germany declared war on 
Portugal, and Rumania declared war on Austria- Hungary, 
for in Transylvania, under the Hungarians, a large pro- 
portion of the people were Rumanians, and the war 
offered an opportunity for these people and their land to 
be rejoined to their mother country. 

In Britain, it became evident that the war would be 
a long one and the whole resources of the country would 
have to be directed to warlike ends. Manufactures of 
all kinds were reduced, and the works and workers turned 
to making munitions, clothing, stores and food required 
by soldiers. Conscription Acts were passed, drafting 
into the army all men able to fight unless they were 
necessary for the service of the country in other ways. 
Thus the war had made Britain become a military as 
well as a naval power, so that she was forced to follow 
the practice of conscription which the other European 
powers followed not only during war, but always. Even 
in time of peace, their young men had had to leave their 
education or work and serve in the army for a certain 
number of years. Another consequence of the war was 
that women took the place of men in many ways ; and 
their willingness and ability to take a great share in 
national work led later to Parliament giving them the 



6 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

right to vote for, and to become, members of Parliament. 
Food and other necessaries of life became scarce and 
therefore dear. The scarcity was partly due to the fact 
that labour was diverted to warfare and partly to the 
difficulty in getting suppHes from abroad. 

The blockade of the Central Powers was carried on 
by warships, but the Germans attempted to blockade 
the Allies by submarine warfare, for only submarines 
could leave the German harbours. Against the laws of 
warfare, the submarines attacked without warning, and 
killed the crews and passengers of merchant ships ; 
further, in 1917, they carried on this ** unrestricted 
submarine campaign " against the ships of neutrals, 
because these ships might be carrying goods to or from 
the belligerent countries. Thus American, Dutch, 
Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and other ships were 
attacked, and because of this, the United States declared 
war on Germany. The submarine warfare, therefore, 
brought in a very powerful state against the Central 
Powers. 

One most important effect of the blockades was upon 
the neutral nations. In the case of Scandinavia, the 
interference of commerce prevented the people obtaining 
their usual imports and exporting their own products. 
For instance, in ordinary times, Norway could not grow 
sufficient food for itself and had to import a large pro- 
portion of corn or flour for its bread ; it paid for this by 
exports, among which fish was one of the most im- 
portant. The import of corn was checked by the war 
and the work of the fishermen was greatly hindered. 
Sweden could still trade without any great interruption 
across the Baltic Sea with Germany, from which it 
was accustomed to obtain coal and manufactured goods, 
but Germany had none of these to spare. 

Again, Holland depended to a considerable extent 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 7 

upon foreign trade which passed up and down the Rhine, 
i.e. to and from Germany, but this trade was stopped. 
Switzerland, too, although an inland country, was 
seriously injured. It is a manufacturing country, but 
had to import its coal from Germany ; this it could 
not obtain, nor could it get either its raw materials or its 
food from across the ocean. Hence these neutral coun- 
tries were very considerably affected ; work, food, and 
clothing were lacking, all the population suffered great 
discomfort and the poorer people were reduced to a 
serious plight ; indeed, apart from the loss of life and 
injury in the actual fighting, some neutrals suffered more 
than some of the belligerent nations. 

It became quite apparent, therefore, that the effects 
of war are nowadays not confined to the fighting coun- 
tries ; the nations are all so bound up with one another 
that what any one does reacts upon the others. The 
world is so linked up by work and trade, by races of men 
living in more than one country, by the aUiances between 
nations, that it is really one great community. Hence, 
no longer can two nations who fight say it is no concern 
of any other nation : it is the concern of all the others, 
and this is the reason why it becomes the business of 
all the world, or of a League of Nations, to prevent war 
and to make arrangements for the countries to work in 
friendly relationship. So the need of a League of Nations 
forced itself upon the world, and Woodrow Wilson, the 
President of the United States, became a powerful 
champion of the idea. 

In Russia another great development took place. 
The government of the country was not democratic, 
carried on by the people as it is in Britain or in the United 
States, but autocratic, in the hands of the Tsar and the 
few people whose advice and help he would accept The 
mass of the people, moreover, had very little education 



8 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

and knew little of what was going on elsevv^here, or why 
they were at war. But they were forced into the army, 
and the government was corrupt, and unable or unwilling 
to supply the troops with arms, clothing, or food. The 
people at home, too, suffered terribly, and so a revolution 
broke out, and in 1917 the Tsar was driven from power 
and Russia was proclaimed a Republic. 

But unfortunately the old government had given the 
people no opportunity of learning how to govern them- 
selves. They had no trained and trusted leaders ; also 
in such a vast country as Russia a great deal of organisa- 
tion and machinery of government is needed to get the 
will of the people expressed and to get their intentions 
carried out. They were like a number of children 
suddenly entrusted with the management of a great 
business, and naturally failed. Moreover, Russia was 
like Austria-Hungary in including different races and 
peoples within its borders, and a number of these, e.g, 
the Poles and the Finns, took the opportunity of breaking 
away. Some extreme Socialists, called the Bolsheviks, 
seized the power in the central part of Russia, and made 
peace with Germany. 

The advantage which the Central Powers got from this 
peace was only temporary, for gradually the strength of 
the Allies showed itself. Modern warfare demands all 
the resources of a nation ; those of the population who 
cannot fight may make the huge number of guns, muni- 
tions, railway engines, motor-cars and other appliances 
which armies now require, and these things depend 
largely upon the supplies of coal- and iron which the 
nations can obtain and work. Now, although the Central 
Powers had the greater and best-equipped armies at the 
beginning, the Allies (especially after the United States 
joined them) had the greater number of coal mines and 
iron quarries, they had a larger number of people, and 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 9 

they could draw on nearly all the world for their stocks 
of cotton, wool, leather, metals, timber and other materials. 
At last, in 191 8, the resources of Germany and its 
allies were exhausted, while their armies were worn down 
by losses and defeated, and one after another they gave 
way. In Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria, the 
peoples rose against their rulers, the governments fell, 
the Kaiser of Germany, the Emperor of Austria, and the 
King of Bulgaria abdicated. The great state of Austria- 
Hungary broke up as that of Russia had done, and its 
subject peoples claimed independent governments of 
their own. 

The right of self-determination of peoples, i.e, their 
right to form their own governments or to choose to what 
state they would belong, had been proclaimed as one of 
the objects of the war, and over a large part of Europe 
there was now an opportunity for it to be carried into 
effect. With the end of the war came the beginning of 
the peace settlements and the reconstruction of Europe — 
a work of many years. 

Problems of the Peace. — New nations had to be 
formed, and in this remaking of the map of Europe a 
great conflict of ideas showed itself. The old Europe 
was largely based upon force and fear ; statesmen be- 
lieved that they could make their own country safe only 
by making it strong as a fighting power, and to this end 
everything else had to give way. They would seize 
more territory and include more people in their realm 
if opportunity offered. 

The hope of the new Europe is that such methods 
should give place to the adjustment of territories according 
to the will of the peoples concerned ; regions should not 
be annexed, or, as has happened more than once, ex- 
changed for others by bargainings between powerful 



10 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

neighbours. The boundaries of states should be fixed 
according to ideas of right and not might, and should be 
drawn not where soldiers would like to have their armies 
ready for attack or defence, but where there is a difference 
between peoples — where the population desires to belong 
to another state. And yet, even now, many countries 
would be very unwilling to draw their boundaries so as 
to give their neighbours a strong position if war broke 
out, and the soldiers had a voice in settling the new 
frontiers. 

Moreover, nations must be able to trade with one 
another, and so they may often wish to have a river, a 
railway, or a port included in their country so that com- 
munication may be easy or that they may not be cut off 
from the sea by some neighbour who might hamper or 
stop their commerce. Again, the possession of fertile 
land, or of coal or iron deposits, is a great gain to a state, 
and offers a temptation difficult to withstand. These 
economic or business desires have conflicted, and still 
conflict, with the idea of self-determination. We shall 
consider, in the latter part of this book, some of the 
cases in which the nations of Central Europe disputed 
about their territories, claiming land here and there, and 
feeling wronged and bitter against their neighbours if 
their claims were not granted. 

When, however, new nations have been formed and 
their boundaries fixed, the problem of the establishment 
of a good government within those territories may still 
remain. This depends mainly upon two things : the 
willingness of the people to work together, and their 
education, particularly in political matters. Where the 
people in a state are divided among themselves, each set 
trying to gain its own ends, endless difficulties arise, and 
the good of all the population is sacrificed. 

Not only goodwill, however, but knowledge also is 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW ii 

required. Where people have never been allowed to 
take any share in the government, as has been the case 
over the greater part of Eastern Europe, they are not 
able to arrange matters. They may be able to read and 
write, but they have not books and newspapers which 
put various sides of questions before them ; they have 
had no system of voting, and the people they elect may 
not be the best they might choose, and in any case have 
not been used to making laws and arranging for them 
to be carried out. Not months but many years are needed 
for a people to be politically educated. In our own 
country the government has become as democratic as 
it is, because of the work of many generations, marred 
by fruitless attempts and bitter conflicts. 

Such difficulties must accompany any changes, but 
after the past war other problems complicated matters. 
Large areas were devastated by warfare, and alm^ost all 
countries brought to the verge of ruin. Towns had to 
be rebuilt, countrysides cleared and made fit for cultiva- 
tion, railways to be reconstructed, and mines to be re- 
opened. Industries had to be formed again, new work- 
men to be trained, credit to be re-established between 
merchants, and ships to be built to bring together the 
materials for work. This economic reconstruction needs 
years, and until it is done neither comfort nor prosperity 
should be expected. Here, again, one nation cannot live 
to itself ; its re-establishment must wait upon that of 
others from whom it requires goods and to whom it wishes 
to sell its own products. Co-operation is essential. 

In the settlement of peace terms those nations which 
had suffered from the attacks of others, as Belgium from 
Germany, and Serbia from Austria, claimed that for the 
destruction wrought they should receive compensation, 
and so clauses to compel payment of various goods and of 
money were inserted into the treaties. Such reparation 



12 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

may be just, but it increased the difficulties of the beaten 
states, as it had to be obtained from countries already 
impoverished and with no hope of relief for many years. 
Hardships were inevitable, all countries were bound to 
suffer, and though attempts were made to put the 
burden upon the guilty, it could not be confined to them. 
All these considerations, together with the fear of 
further and still more horrible wars, compelled the 
formation of the League of Nations. 

The League of Nations. — In the treaties of peace 
made at the close of the war were included agreements 
about the League of Nations. These agreements formed 
a " Covenant " signed by most of the nations of the world. 
The Covenant bound the nations to reduce their fighting 
forces as much as possible, to adopt certain means of 
settling disputes and preventing war, to publish instead 
of keeping secret the treaties they make with one another, 
to arrange for the just government of backward peoples, 
to secure humane conditions of labour in all countries, 
to facilitate means of transit and communications for all 
countries, to supervise trade in dangerous drugs and in 
arms, to co-operate in improving health and preventing 
disease throughout the world. 

The machinery by which all these things are to be 
done must be explained. The League of Nations 
works through two bodies : (i) the Assembly, consisting 
of representatives of all the states belonging to the League ; 
(2) the Council of nine members consisting of repre- 
sentatives of the United States,* the British Empire, 
France, Italy, Japan, and four other states chosen by the 
Assembly. The League has a permanent staff and its 
seat is at Geneva, in Switzerland. 

* The United States did not agree with some details of the'Covenant, 
and so did not send representatives to the League when it was first 
formed. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 13 

The members of the League agree to reduce their 
national armaments as far as possible, and it is the business 
of the Council to draw up plans for this reduction, but 
the states are not bound to accept these plans. 

They undertalce to protect each other from aggression, 
and declare that any war or threat of war is a matter of 
concern to the whole League. If any dispute arises they 
agree to refer the matter either to arbitration or to inquiry 
by the Council, and they agree in no case to resort to war 
until three months after the award by the arbitrators or 
the report of the Council. If the disputing states accept, 
and the matter is one which can be definitely and simply 
settled, the method of arbitration may be employed ; the 
two states are to agree upon the arbitrators and to bind 
themselves to carry out their award. To facilitate the 
settlement of such questions, the League established a 
" Permanent Court of International Justice, '* somewhat 
like a Court of Law in our own country ; this Court 
would be a suitable body to act as arbitrators. 

Disputes which cannot be so simply settled one way 
or the other, or which the disputing parties do not refer 
to arbitration, are to be submitted to the Council. When 
the Council cannot get the parties to settle it between 
themselves, they will hold an inquiry (which may be made 
public) and issue their recommendations as to a settlement. 
If the Council is unanimous in its recommendations, and 
one party carries them out, the other party agrees not to 
go to war on that account. But if the Council is not 
unanimous in its decision, it shall publish a report on 
the case and may make recommendations, but the parties 
are not bound to carry them out. Moreover, the Council 
cannot deal with any matters which are declared to be 
the concern of '* domestic jurisdiction," i.e. the internal 
affairs of one member alone. 

Thus it appears that the League does not claim to 



14 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

prevent war absolutely, but it is hoped that the delay 
which is agreed upon will give time for passions to cool ; 
and the publicity which is assured will enable the people 
of the countries concerned to know what are the rights 
and wrongs of the matter in dispute and not to be forced 
blindly into war by their governments. It is very possible 
that if the dispute between Austria and Serbia had been 
dealt with under these agreements, the Great War would 
never have taken place. Moreover, should war break 
out in disregard of the Covenant, the members of the 
League bind themselves to have no trade or communica- 
tion of any kind with the offending party, and that would 
in these days cripple almost any state ; finally, the Council 
has to recommend to the other states what part they 
shall play in bringing armed force to bear upon the 
offender, though there is only a moral and not a legal 
obhgation upon the states to take part in such active 
measures. 

To prevent disputes arising at all, the states agree to 
publish all treaties they mxake with one another, so that 
all agreements shall be " above board," and secret nego- 
tiations which would not bear the examination of the 
world will disappear. Trouble will also be prevented 
by the League supervising arrangements for the trade 
communications between countries. If nations are given 
facilities for travelling, and for sending their goods 
through their neighbours' countries without hindrances 
or high charges, much friction may be avoided. This 
is of special importance to those states of Central Europe, 
such as Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Czecho- 
slovakia, which have no outlet to the sea. The railways 
and waterways through the neighbouring states will be 
brought under international control in order to ensure 
fair treatment. 

Those territories and colonies which have been under 



THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE 15 

other states and released as a result of the war, and whose 
peoples are not yet sufficiently advanced to govern 
themselves or look after their own interests, are taken 
under the protection of the League, and are entrusted 
to the care of some other state to whom a mandate is 
given for this purpose. As most of these regions are 
outside Europe, a fuller account of these mandates is 
given in the books of this series on '' World Geography 
and World Problems," and " The British Empire and its 
Problems." 

An International Labour Office was organised to 
secure fair and humane conditions of labour for men, 
women, and children in all countries ; this should prove 
one of the most important duties of the League, for it 
directly affects the lives of millions of people ; similar 
organisations are set up to limit or forbid the sale of 
opium and dangerous drugs, of arms, weapons and am- 
munition, and arrangements are made to help Red Cross 
Societies and to enable the nations to co-operate in 
dealing with diseases which, if unchecked, spread from 
country to country. In these ways, and in others, the 
League of Nations may prove of the greatest value to all 
the peoples of the world.* 



THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE 

To understand the nations of Europe one must know 
both about the peoples who form these nations and also 
about the kind of country they inhabit. The peoples of 
two regions may be quite different from one another in 

* For further information regarding the work of the League of 
Nations, apply to the Secretary, League of Nations Union, 15, Gros- 
venor Crescent, London, S.W. 



i6 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

their appearance ; they may talk different languages and 
have different religions ; they may be under different 
governments. Some may be content with the govern- 
ment under which they live and in which they share, 
while others may be discontented because they are 
ruled by a people who belong to a different nationality 
from themselves. It is in such discontent that revolts have 
arisen and wars have begun. This section will deal with 
the peoples of Europe, and the remaining ones with the 
lands, their resources, the work of the people, and the 
problems of the various states. 

The Races of Europe. — The religion of a people 
may be changed, their language may be imposed upon 
them by conquerors, and their nationality is a matter, of 
their willingness to live in a particular state. All these 
things can be altered at the will of people and may change 
as circumstances change, but the race of the people 
cannot be affected at will. It depends upon their origin, 
is transmitted from generation to generation, and shows 
itself in their bodily characteristics. People may migrate 
to another country, learn a different language and become 
members of another nation, but the race remains un- 
changed. Of course people of different races may 
inter- marry, and so the race may be modified, but the 
modifications which occur in the children depend on the 
physical and mental peculiarities of the parents, and are 
not affected by the wishes of parents or children. 

The different races of mankind are therefore to be 
told from their physical characteristics : very little is 
yet known about the connection between mental charac- 
teristics and race. 

An African negro is at once known from a European 
by his appearance ; his woolly hair would alone mark 
him off as belonging to a different race, for the European 



THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE 17 

races have wavy but not woolly hair. The Asiatic 
peoples (except those of India and the south-west) have 
straight lank hair like that of the Japanese, and in the 
east of Europe are peoples who originally belonged to 
Asiatic groups. A negro is also to be known by his almost 
black skin, while all Europeans are very much lighter, 
and the Asiatics have a yellowish skin. Certain features 
may also be noted : the negroes have thick lips, many 
(but not all) Asiatics have almond-shaped, oblique eyes, 
while Europeans have neither of these characteristics. 

Another test of race is the average height, though 
there are, of course, taller and shorter individuals in all 
groups. In Europe, for example, the tallest peoples are 
those of the north, those of Central Europe are of medium 
height, while the Mediterranean peoples are distinctly 
shorter on the average. Other characteristics which are 
at once apparent are the relative darkness of the skin, 
and the colour of the hair and eyes. These commonly 
go together ; for example, in Northern Europe the 
majority of the people have a light skin, fair hair, and blue 
or grey eyes. In Central Europe the people have rather 
darker tints, while in the Mediterranean region they have 
a dark skin, and still darker hair and eyes. Where 
people have migrated, and so races have mixed with one 
another, exceptions occur and blue eyes may go with 
darker hair, or the individuals of a district may differ 
from one another. 

These characteristics of the average height and the 
colour of peoples may quite possibly change slowly after 
people have migrated. It is quite possible that the 
stronger sun of regions near the tropics may in the course 
of many generations alter not merely the skin colour, but 
even the colour of the hair and eyes of people, and the 
diet or mode of life may similarly affect the average 
height. Yet so slowly would these changes occur that 

C 



i8 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

for hundreds of years the original characteristics would 
be noticeable and show the race of the people. 

Another characteristic is less apparent than these, 
and is generally considered not to change even though 
people change their abode and their ways of life ; this 
is the shape of their skull. In some people the length 
of the skull from front to back is considerably greater 
than the breadth from above one ear to above the other 
ear ; such people are called long-skulled. In other 
people the length is not very much greater than the 
breadth ; these are called round-skulled or broad- 
skulled people. Now if the height and colour of the 
European peoples were alone taken, the Northern ones 
would be marked out as different from those of the 
Mediterranean, but the Central European peoples might 
be thought of as being intermediate, and resulting from 
a mixing of the other two sets. But the skull-form shows 
that this is not so, for while both Northern and Mediter- 
ranean peoples are long-skulled, the Central peoples are 
broad-skulled. It is therefore concluded that they must 
be of a different race, and hence three European races 
are distinguished : (i) the Northern race, tall, light- 
skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and long-skulled ; (2) 
the Central or Alpine race, of medium height and dark- 
ness, and broad-skulled ; (3) the Mediterranean race, 
short, dark-complexioned, with very dark eyes and hair, 
and long-skulled. 

Long ago, before the times of which we have definite 
knowledge, these three races inhabited the regions which 
are suggested by the names. Northern, Alpine, and 
Mediterranean, but since then they have all migrated 
somewhat ; and peoples of the Alpine race have pushed 
out from their mountain home, where the country could 
not support a rapidly increasing number of people, over 
the plains beneath and right across the east of Europe. 



THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE 19 

This eastern branch of the Alpine peoples is known as 
the Slav or Slavonic group. 

In Western Europe the three races are fairly simply 
arranged : the Northern race occupies Scandinavia, 
Denmark, the plains south of the Baltic Sea as far east 
as the country around the Gulf of Riga, and most of the 
lowlands around the North Sea and the English Channel. 
The Alpine race occupies the uplands and highlands 
further south, in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, 
and Austria, and in parts has extended into the country on 
either side, as, for example, across the plains of France 
into the region of Brittany, and into the northern part of 
Italy. The Mediterranean race occupies the Iberian 
Peninsula, southern Italy and the adjoining islands. It 
should be noted that these racial divisions do not agree 
with the divisions of the people into the present nations, 
nor do they correspond with differences of language. 

In Eastern Europe the races are more complicated, 
for in addition to the Slavonic branch of the Alpine race 
and traces of the Northern and Mediterranean peoples, 
we here find peoples of Asiatic origin who have forced 
their way into Europe. The Slavs seem to have originated 
in the Northern Carpathian region, but have become 
divided both by this intrusion of other races and also by 
their own slow movement outward from the highlands, 
so that there are now three main groups of Slavs, Western, 
Eastern^ and Southern, respectively, separated partly by 
natural barriers of mountain or marsh, partly by settle- 
ments of other races. 

The Western Slavs include the Poles, the Czechs 
{pronounced Checks), and the Slovaks. The Czechs 
and Slovaks adjoin one another and have formed the 
common state Czecho- Slovakia ; they are almost com- 
pletely separated from the Poles by mountains (compare 
the map of peoples in Fig. 8 with one showing the relief 



20 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

of the land). The Poles of Poland are not so well marked 
off from other peoples, but between them and the greater 
part of the Eastern Slavs is the thinly-populated region 
of swamps in the basin of the river Pripet, a tributary of 
the Dnieper. 

The Eastern Slavs are in three groups : to the north 
of the Pripet Marshes are the White Russians, to the 
south are the Little Russians or Ukrainians, while east- 
ward are the Great Russians, who pushed forward to the 
Upper Volga region, and thence extended over the whole 
of this river basin and even further over the great plains. 
Some of the Ukrainians have migrated westward over the 
Carpathian Mountains into the basin of the Upper Tisza 
(or Theiss) where they are known as Ruthenians. 

The Southern Slavs, or Jugo- Slavs (pronounced 
Yugo- Slavs), were driven southward many centuries ago 
from the Carpathians into the Balkan Peninsula and the 
mountainous region which connects it with the Eastern 
Alps. Between the northern end of the Adriatic Sea and 
the Drave tributary of the Danube are the Slovenes, and 
next to them on the south-east are the Croats and Serbs. 
These three peoples are those of the newly-formed 
kingdom of Jugo-Slavia, and the other peoples of the 
Balkan Peninsula are partly descended from the same 
stock. 

The Asiatic peoples who have penetrated into Europe 
belong to two races, a northern one known as the Ugro- 
Finns and a southern one known as the Turki peoples. 
The Ugro-Finns spread out from the Ural mountain 
region, and from them are descended the Lapps of the 
extreme north of Europe, but their other descendants 
have so mixed with the Slavs, among whom they have 
lived for many hundreds of years, that they have lost 
many of the characteristics of their race, though they 
have handed down their own traditions, names and 



THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE 21 

languages, so that they are still regarded as separate 
peoples. Among these peoples are the Finns of Finland, 
and belonging to the same race are the Ests of Esthonia 
upon the opposite shores of the Gulf of Finland, though 
the Letts and Lithuanians further south form a branch 
of the Northern race (for the distribution of these peoples, 
see Fig. 9). From the Ugro-Finn race also came the 
ancestors of the Magyars or Hungarians who now occupy 
the plain of Hungary, while the Bulgarians are another 
mixed people resulting from an intrusion of the same 
stock upon Serbian peoples. 

The Turki peoples came into Europe by two routes, 
one on the north and the other on the south side of the 
Caspian Sea. By the more northern route across the 
steppe lands penetrated wave after wave of horsemen, 
from whom the Tatars and Kirghiz of south Russia are 
descended. By the more southern route across the 
highlands and plateaus of Asia Minor came the Turks, 
who invaded the Balkan Region, where some of them 
still remain. 

Languages, Religions, and Nations. — To some extent 
race distinctions agree with differences of language, but 
as the people of a particular race separate into different 
regions, their language develops into different dialects. 
At first these dialects may be very similar, but as time 
goes on they become more unlike, and the further the 
branches of the race are separated, the less the people 
have to do with one another, and so the more unlike 
their languages become. Thus, to take the case of the 
Slavs : their languages are all of the Slavonic group and 
still have many similarities, but those of the Czechs, the 
Serbs and the Great Russians have become quite distinct 
from one another. On the other hand, there are only 
differences of dialect between the neighbouring Czechs 



22 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

and Slovaks ; similarly the Croats and Serbs of Jugo- 
slavia have the same speech. The Bulgarians, however, 
have differences brought in by the intruding Asiatic tribes, 
so that Bulgarian is different from Serbian. 

The languages of eastern Europe are thus fairly 
closely related to the race of the people, but in the western 
part of the continent the languages have spread beyond 
the racial boundaries. There are not three groups of 
languages spoken by the peoples of the three races, 
Northern, Alpine, and Mediterranean, but now only two 
important groups, namely, Teutonic and Romance. 
The Teutonic languages come from some early form of 
German and are spoken in England, Scandinavia, Den- 
mark, Germany, Austria, Holland, and parts of Belgium 
and Switzerland ; the Romance languages come from 
Latin and ancient Greek, and are spoken in France, 
Spain, Portugal, Italy, parts of Switzerland and Belgium, 
and in Greece. Moreover, separated from these countries, 
Rumania has a language derived from Latin, for its people 
(who are of mixed race) have handed down among 
themselves the language, names and traditions of some 
colonists of the Roman Empire : the country owes its 
name to the fact that it originated in Roman colonies 
among the *' barbarians " of that age. 

It will be seen that, broadly speaking, the nations of 
Eastern Europe consist of groups of people of similar 
race and language, while in Western Europe the separate 
nations are composed to a greater degree of people of 
mixed race and even different languages ; nationality is, 
therefore, a matter simply of the feelings and wishes of 
the people. People of similar speech and descent may 
feel themselves one people, and indeed tend to do so ; 
but it is quite possible for them to separate into two 
nations : a case in point is that of Denmark and Norway. 
On the other hand, peoples of dissimilar speech and 



THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE 23 

different descent may unite and form a single nation as 
in the case of Belgium, where in the northern part of the 
country the people are of the Northern race and speak 
Flemish, a language of the Teutonic group, while in the 
southern part the people are of the Alpine race and speak 
French. 

If, therefore, one wished to examine the rearrange- 
ment of countries after the Great War, and see whether 
it appeared to be a just one, it would not be sufficient 
merely to see if the new boundaries agreed with differences 
of race or of language ; the only real test would be the 
wishes of the inhabitants in the matter of government. 

Religions, again, introduce another element. Of the 
peoples of Western Europe who profess a religious faith, 
the majority belong either to the Roman Catholic form of 
Christianity, or (in the northern part) to the Protestant 
religion which broke off from it a few centuries ago. 
The peoples of Eastern Europe belong mainly to one of 
the branches of the Greek Church, which separated from 
the Roman Church nearly 1000 years ago ; most, but 
by no means all, of the Slavonic people profess some 
form of the Greek faith. The Turks, together with some 
of the Turki peoples of eastern Russia, are Mohammedans. 
In some countries the religion of the people is closely 
bound up with their nationality, but in other countries 
the people may be of two, or even more, different religions 
and yet be quite united politically. 

Finally, the Jews must be noted. They are de- 
scended from the people of Judea in Syria, and so from 
the Mediterranean race ; they have spread into almost 
all parts of Europe and have retained their Jewish religion 
and some form of their ancient language. In some 
countries they have mixed easily with the other inhabi- 
tants, but in others they have been treated harshly, and 
in turn bear no love to their neighbours. They often 



24 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

become successful traders, and in some cases they are 
money-lenders, who have incurred the dislike of the people 
whose property they have acquired ; hence there have 
been persecutions, especially in Russia. The greatest 
proportion of Jews is found in Poland, and in several 
parts of Eastern Europe there is a " Jewish problem." 



THE COUNTRIES AND THEIR 
PROBLEMS 

The preceding section described certain characteristics 
of the peoples of Europe, but other important matters 
are largely dependent upon the nature of the country 
in which they live. 

The work which the people can do settles to a great 
degree the life they lead ; in one region they may be 
peasants working on the land and living in small and widely 
scattered villages, leading a hard but healthy life, buying 
and selling little, and seldom coming into contact with 
other people. In another region the people may be 
miners, spending a third of their time underground ; 
they may earn more money than the peasants, but their 
work renders them liable to accident or sudden death ; 
they may live in closely packed houses in towns, belong 
to trade-unions, read newspapers, and take an interest 
in the government of the country. In still another 
region the people may be largely engaged in commerce, 
some as rich merchants, and others much poorer, working 
as clerks or porters ; they live in a large city and are 
constantly in touch with many other people ; in this 



NORTHERN EUROPE 25 

city there are also men who get their living by professions 
or from the money invested in businesses of all kinds ; 
here newspapers are printed and the government of the 
country may be centred. 

All these matters are largely settled by the nature of 
the regions and their resources. The first would be a 
region like Russia with a cold climate, and so the land is 
largely forest and little return is given to agriculture, 
while no other means of living is offered by nature. The 
second district is one where the ground contains coal not 
far from the surface, and so mining is possible. The 
third is an example of a great commercial city situated 
where the easy ways across the country (following the 
river valleys and avoiding the highlands) meet and give 
a good centre for trade. Thus it is necessary to know the 
relief or '* build " of the lands, their climate and pro- 
ductions, and their opportunities for commerce ; the 
following sections aim at showing how the physical 
conditions affect the lives of the peoples and the political 
problems of the states. 



NORTHERN EUROPE 

The most northerly part of the continent lies within 
the Arctic Circle. Here the winter is long, and in this 
season the daylight lasts but a very short time ; indeed, 
at midwinter there is a period of some days when the 
sun does not appear at all. In the summer the days are 
correspondingly long and the sun can be seen at mid- 
night, but it is never high in the sky and so gives little 
heat. The region is the northern end of a great mass 
of very hard rock which forms the Scandinavian Penin- 
sula. This mass may be thought of as a huge block of 



26 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

rock rising steeply from beneath the Atlantic Ocean, 
having a flat top, and dipping gently to the south-east 
towards the Baltic Sea. Thus there are three regions : 
the Norwegian coast, the high plateau, and the Swedish 
slope.* 

The Norwegian coast is a part of the earth's crust in 
which very long ago innumerable cracks, called faults, 
occurred. These faults ran in various directions, and to 
a considerable extent they ran along the line of the 
present coast of Norway, letting down the ground on the 
west under the sea while that on the east was raised to 
a plateau. Along the lines of the faults, rivers cut deep 
and steep-sided valleys in the highland edge and, later, 
glaciers worked their way down from the snow-fields 
above. After this the whole region sank down some- 
what, and as this sinking very gradually went on, the sea 
water covered the lower parts of the valleys turning them 
into magnificent fiords with high walls of rock, beautiful 
to see and wonderful to remember. Flat land is only 
found here and there at the sides and at the head of the 
fiord ; on such patches the few people have their homes 
and grow hay as winter food for their cattle, which in the 
summer get scanty pasture on the gentler slopes. The 
windings of the Sogne Fiord are more than loo miles 
long, so that its head is almost immediately beneath the 
Jotun Fjeld (Giants' Plateau), which is about 8,000 feet 
above its w^aters. Further north the Trondhjem Fiord 
is broader, and has some lowland around it. 

Beyond the coast a great number of islands stand up 
out of the sea, the Lofoten Islands being the most im- 

* All the regions and places mentioned should be looked out in the 
atlas ; the study of maps should go on together with the study of the 
test. It is very useful to look carefully at the map of each district and 
at the same time to think of its characteristics as described in the book ; 
this helps one to remember the facts, to associate them with particular 
localities, and to see how the situation affects the characteristics. 



NORTHERN EUROPE 27 

portant ; they represent portions of the old land too high 
to be covered when the lower ground around them was 
drowned. The inlets and islands give shelter for the few 
trading vessels and the more numerous fishing-boats. 
These northern seas, particularly the shallows near the 
coast, are rich in fish, so that people add the harvest of 
the sea to the meagre harvests of the land. 

The great plateau behind the coast is covered with 
snow m winter and in the highest parts even in the 
summer ; vegetation is almost lacking, and there are very 
few inhabitants. It is not level, but cut into by valleys, 
and the streams which flow to the Baltic Sea have almost 
parallel courses across the plateau and down the eastern 
slope. At some parts of this slope the land falls more 
steeply in terrace-like form, and the rivers have corre- 
sponding rapids and falls ; elsewhere the streams broaden 
into lakes, and a series of these marks the eastern foot of 
the higher ground. The valleys give routes across the 
highlands : in the north the Tornea and Lulea lead from 
the head of the Gulf of Bothnia almost across the plateau 
towards the Ofoten Fiord, and in the south the River 
Glommen offers a path almost to the Trondhjem Fiord. 
For much of its length the Glommen flows to the south- 
east, but in its lower course it turns to the south-west, 
and so drains into the Skager Rak. At the northern 
extremity of the Skager Rak is Christiania Fiord, and in 
its neighbourhood is the greatest expanse of lowland and 
the most fertile ground of Norway. 

The climate of the two sides of the highland is 
markedly different in winter, for the west is warmed by 
the south-west winds from the sea, and off the shore is 
the North Atlantic Drift of warmer water blown slowly 
by the winds from southern latitudes. Even in mid- 
winter the harbours are not frozen, and ships can round 
the North Cape to the open harbour of Murmansk in 



28 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Russian Lappland. On the Baltic side of the peninsula 
there are no warnied waters, and the plateau prevents the 
warm south-west wind reaching this region ; in winter, 
rivers and lakes are frozen and ports are blocked by ice. 
In summer the whole region, except upon the colder 
highlands, has a temperature only a little lower than that 
of England. The west has abundant rain throughout 
the year, especially in the south, but the sheltered east 
is relatively dry. 

The lower lands of Sweden may be divided into two 
parts, northern and southern. In the north are lands 
bordering the Gulf of Bothnia ; neither climate nor soil 
is favourable, and the most noteworthy resources of this 
region are the minerals, for iron ore is found in the far 
north and several metals are mined in the south in the 
neighbourhood of the Dal River. Just south of the Dal 
River is Lake Malar, one of a series which lies in a belt of 
very low land between the Skager Rak and the Baltic 
Sea. Lake Vener drains by the Gota River to the Katte- 
gat, and a canal between lakes Vener and Vetter and the 
Baltic completes the waterway between the two seas. 
South of this belt of lakes are the most fertile parts of 
Sweden, but the central portion even of this region is of 
little value. The more hardy grains, such as rye and oats, 
grow better than wheat, but farmers depend to a greater 
extent on keeping cattle than on growing food for people. 
The products of the forests, such as timber and resin, 
are important both in Sweden and in Norway. 

A map of the natural vegetation of Scandinavia shows 
how the ground would be covered if man had not inter- 
fered ; and over much of this region the actual conditions 
are very similar to those shown on the map, for only the 
most useful parts of the peninsula have been cleared of 
forest and adapted to man's use. 

The highest land in the south and lower land in the 



NORTHERN EUROPE 29 

north are so cold that even trees will not grow. The very 
coldest parts are covered with perpetual snow ; this 
forms into great snow-fields and is pressed together into 
masses of ice which are forced outwards and downwards 
by the weight of snow accumulating on the high plateaus. 
The ice flows very slowly downward in the form of 
glaciers, until at last it gets to a level where the warmth 
is sufficient to melt it. Such high regions are perpetually 
covered with snow and ice ; in others the snow is melted 
at midsummer and reveals bare rock. In somewhat 
warmer parts the snow disappears for a longer period 
and low bushes can grow, while the rock is covered with 
mosses and lichens. This last type of country is also 
found along the coastal lowlands north-east of the 
peninsula, where it is called the tundra land. The 
Lapps of this northern region keep reindeer, which can 
get a living even on scanty pasture. The reindeer 
gives milk, its flesh is used for food, and its skin for 
clothes and other purposes ; the life of the Lapps is, 
therefore, limited very largely by the characteristics of 
the reindeer. 

The lower lands of the greater part of the peninsula 
are still almost completely covered by the great forests 
of coniferous trees, chiefly pines and firs, together with 
birches. In the south of the country, both in Norway 
and Sweden, the forests are composed of deciduous 
trees, which lose their leaves in the winter, oaks being 
most common and beeches appearing in the extreme 
south. In Scandinavia, as in other regions, it is decidu- 
ous forest which is mainly cleared ; the colder climate 
which is suitable for the coniferous trees is not favourable 
to cultivation. 

Finland, the region lying east of the Gulf of Bothnia, 
is very level, broadly speaking, but much of the ground is 
covered with an innumerable multitude of lakes of most 



30 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

complicated shapes, and joined by a tangled network of 
waterways. The " bed rock " (under the water, marsh, 
or loose fragments which form such soil as there may be) 
is composed of hard rock, Very long ago, it was worn 
down by the action of the weather and streams till it was 
almost a plain, but more recently it suffered a great change 
during what is known as the " Ice Age." The effects of 
this upon the countries and the peoples are so great, 
that an account of what happened then helps us to under- 
stand what is happening to-day. 

The Great Ice Sheet and its Borders. — Many thou- 
sands of years ago, long before the times of which 
we have any historical knowledge, the climate over all 
Northern Europe was far colder than it is now. The 
snow, which now collects on the higher parts of the 
Scandinavian plateau and sends glaciers a few miles 
down the valleys, then accumulated over the whole region, 
and pressing outward formed a great sheet of ice covering 
many thousands of square miles. This sheet was hundreds 
of feet thick, and was slowly forced southwards and east- 
wards by the pressure of more ice forming behind it. It 
scraped away the loose earth, carrying it to what we now 
call Russia, Poland, and Germany, and beneath the ice 
the rock was in parts left bare with deep scratches showing 
the direction of the movement, while in other parts 
material dragged from the north was accumulated be- 
neath the ice. 

During one period the edge of one part of the ice 
sheet melted just north of the Gulf of Finland (see in 
Fig. I the line marked III), and here boulders, stones, 
and gravel were left, while the water which came from 
the melted ice carried away the finer sand and clayey 
particles ; thus along the edge were built up mounds, 
in the shape of lines of low hills, formed of this morainic 



NORTHERN EUROPE 



31 



material, as it is called. As the climate became warmer, 
the ice melted further and further north, and its edge 
was therefore found further back ; we say the ice 
" retreated." In this retreat, which probably took 
thousands of years, more of the morainic material 




Emery Warmer Ltd, sc. 



Fig. I. — Limits of the Ice Sheet. 



was left scattered irregularly over the country behind 
the clearly marked line of the morainic mounds or hills. 
' -i After this period the rivers of Finland once more 
flowed southward as they had done before the ice covered 
the country, but now they were blocked by these irregular 
masses, and much of the drainage of the country was held 



32 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

back by the line of morainic hills behind the southern 
coast. The water collected into lakes which covered 
most of this low-lying land ; it gradually rose higher, 
till it overflowed and formed streams which ran in 
rapids and cascades over the barriers in winding courses 
to the sea. Slowly these streams cut notches in the 
obstructing hills and mounds, and the lakes began to be 
drained, but there has not yet been time enough for this 
process to be carried very far, though marshes show where 
the work has been partly done. 

Thus this " glaciation " of Finland has removed the 
fertile soil and left irregular deposits of all kinds, caused 
the lakes and marshes, and interrupted the smooth flow 
of the rivers by falls and rapids. Only along by the shores 
of the Gulf of Finland, south of the line of morainic hills, 
is the ground less encumbered and here most of the 
people live, mainly by farming, by fishing, or by cutting 
and selling the timber of the forests which are found 
in the drier parts of the land. This southern strip has 
deciduous trees, but in the rest of the land the forests 
are coniferous. 

In the north of Finland the ground is higher, lakes 
are fewer, but the climate is too severe for agriculture. 
Along the coast of the Arctic Sea the land is of the 
tundra type, frozen and covered with ice or snow for much 
of the year, and marshy when the snow has melted ; the 
very few inhabitants depend upon the sea as much as 
upon the land for their living. 

Just as the old edge of the ice sheet marks a diflference 
between the greater part of Finland and its southern 
coast, so a difference is found between the greater part 
of the Scandinavian peninsula and its southern portion, 
for here also there was a time when the ice remained in 
the north while the region south of the belt of great 
lakes was free. An ordinary atlas shows a number of 



NORTHERN EUROPE 33 

lakes in Finland and a few in Scandinavia, but only a 
large-scale map reveals the fact that there are thousands 
of lakes, large, small and tiny, in each region. The ice 
has played a very similar part in both countries, and so 
it is one of the chief factors in making Sweden infertile, 
and thereby preventing the growth of a great nation. 

Although the ice has injured agriculture, it has helped 
the country in other respects. The rapids and falls in 
the rivers check navigation, but may give water-power. 
The falling or fast-running streams may be directed 
into water-wheels or turbines which revolve and set 
machinery in motion. This machinery may be used 
in several ways : it may turn mills for grinding corn, or 
for sawing timber, or for reducing wood to a pulp from 
which paper is made ; also it may produce electricity, 
and then this electricity can be applied to many uses. 
It can drive railway trains or tram-cars, it can be used 
for lighting, it can be applied to machinery in factories 
of any kind, it can heat electric furnaces in which metals 
can be melted or chemicals produced. Moreover, the 
electricity can be used for these purposes either where it 
is produced, close to the rapids or falls, or it can be easily 
conveyed by wires for many miles to cities or other 
convenient places. In all these ways the water-power 
of Sweden and Finland is now being employed, and other 
glaciated regions in Europe and in America are now 
taking advantage of the water-power due to the ancient 
ice sheet. In Norway, water-power from glacial falls 
is not so common, but the streams falling from the high 
plateau to the sea are similarly valuable, and these are 
now being utilised to a large extent. 

If Denmark is thought of as a peninsula of the main- 
land of Europe, it may seem to be quite distinct from the 
Scandinavian lands, but the people of Denmark are 
Scandinavians, Moreover, more of them live upon the 

D 



34 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

islands than upon the mainland, and these islands are 
very closely connected with the southernmost par of 
Sweden. For these reasons it is convenient to consider 
Denmark with the Scandinavian lands. 

It has been explained above that at one period the 
edge of the ice was near the lake-belt of southern Sweden 
and near the southern coast of Finland. At an earlier 
period, when the climate was still colder, the ice had a 
wider extension and its edge was found in regions further 
south (see the hne marked II in Fig. i). This edge ran 
through the Danish peninsula of Jutland, south of the 
Baltic Sea and across north-western Russia. 

At a still earlier period, when the cold was even more 
severe, the ice extended still further, as is shown by the 
line marked I upon the map. Thus the regions south 
of the Baltic Sea show important effects of the ice, but 
probably it never had so great an influence here as in 
Finland and north Scandinavia, and as it melted from 
this south Baltic region many thousands of years before 
it melted from the northern area there has been time for 
some of the most marked features to have disappeared. 
The rivers have drained most of the lakes, and though 
some are still left and marshes are frequently met with, 
more of the land is able to be used for agriculture. Also 
the streams have cut down through the obstacles in their 
path so that their courses are less impeded by rapids : 
navigation is therefore possible, but water-power is not 
so abundant. There are other effects of the ice which 
have to be explained when Germany is studied ; for the 
present the attention must be limited to Denmark. 

The edge of the ancient ice which ran northward 
through Jutland is marked by morainic hills rather like 
those of the coast of Finland, and in the glaciated area 
east of these and on the islands the surface of the land 
is uneven enough to give a pleasant variety to the scenery. 



NORTHERN EUROPE 35 

This country was once covered with deciduous forests, 
largely composed of beech trees, but as the glacial deposit 
is fairly fertile and the climate is warmer than in the 
other lands we have considered, most of it is now cleared. 
The glacial deposit is largely of clay, with which sand is 
sometimes mixed, and in the clay are found stones of all 
shapes and sizes, even huge boulders larger than a room, 
dragged from Scandinavia ; this mass is called boulder- 
clay, and it covers a considerable part of the glaciated 
region. Some of this soil in east Jutland and the Danish 
islands is used for agriculture, but a large proportion of 
it is pasture land, for the Danish farmers are famous for 
the animals they keep and the milk and butter they 
obtain. 

The western part of the Danish peninsula is quite 
different from the east. It is a low, flat, sandy region, 
very like that of the south shores of the North Sea. The 
sandy soil is infertile, and along by the shore are dunes 
made of sand washed along the coast by the sea and blown 
up over the land by the westerly wind. The wide flats 
of sand exposed when the sea goes down at low tide, 
have only narrow, shallow, winding channels in them, 
and so ships avoid this coast, and the chief harbours of 
Denmark are on the eastern side, where also are most of 
the people who wish to sell and buy ; the larger towns, 
therefore, are either on the eastern coast or on the 
islands. 



The Scandinavian Peoples. — Swedes, Norwegians, and 
Danes all belong to the same branch of the Northern 
race ; they are mostly tall, with fair hair and blue eyes. 
In the past they have been very closely united, and 
originally they all came from one group of people who 



36 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

lived in the region of the Danish islands and the southern 
lowlands of the Scandinavian peninsula as far north as 
Christiania and the lake belt of Sweden. The sea 
channels joined rather than separated the various settle- 
ments of this people. At the heart of the region, on the 
Sound between the islands and the southern extremity 
of the peninsula, grew up the capital, Copenhagen. 
Here was the centre of the ancient Kingdom of Denmark, 
which later gained power over the north of the Scandi- 
navian Peninsula, and even obtained possession of 
distant islands, the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland ; 
consequently these islands are still joined in government 
to Denmark. 

The Danes conquered, and for a time ruled, the 
eastern part of Britain, and the present population of 
this portion of the British Isles is partly descended 
from the Danish settlers. 

Several centuries ago, the Swedish region broke off 
from the rest, Sweden became an independent Kingdom, 
and its language grew more unlike the Danish language. 
This left Copenhagen at the frontier and not, as of old, 
at the centre of the Kingdom of Denmark. Norway, 
however, remained under the Danish kings, and during 
this time the Danish language was spoken over the 
greater part of Norway, although dialects were used by 
particular groups of Norwegians ; hence the Norwegian 
and Danish languages are now very similar. 

A little more than loo years ago there was the series 
of wars following the French Revolution, which we call 
the Napoleonic Wars. These involved nearly all the 
countries of Europe, and brought about changes which 
may be compared with those of the recent Great War. 
At this period Norway became separate from Denmark, 
and then, against the will of the Norwegian people, the 
King of Sweden was made also the King of Norway ; 



DENMARK 37 

only at the beginning of the present century did Norway 
become entirely free and able to choose her own ruler. 

Thus, although they form part of the same peninsula, 
Norw^ay and Sweden were for a long time separate states, 
and, moreover, for much of their extent they are divided 
by the uninhabited plateau across which communication 
is difficult. Also the Norwegians, living by the coast 
and constantly upon the sea, either as fishers or to get 
from one fiord to another, used the water as a road, 
became seafarers, and so came into contact with the 
other coast lands of Europe, particularly the British Isles. 
The Swedes, however, passed across the Baltic to Finland, 
Russia, and Germany, and so had more relations (either 
peaceful or hostile) with these countries. 



DENMARK 

Denmark is now quite a small country, ' only about 
half the size of Scotland, and has a population of about 
3,000,000 people, that is, rather more than half the 
population of Scotland. It has no minerals to form a 
basis for manufactures, and the work which directly or 
indirectly supports the great majority of its people is 
the keeping of animals, particularly cattle and pigs, and 
the production and export of dairy produce. 

Until about forty or fifty years ago, it depended upon 
growing grain as food for its people, but when the great 
farm lands of America were opened up, and grain was 
sent in large amount to Europe, this competition 
threatened to ruin the Danish farmers. Very wisely 
they saw that they must change their methods and 
produce commodities less open to competition than 
wheat, which could be sent great distances cheaply, and 
without being spoilt. So they turned their attention to 



38 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

producing milk, cream, cheese and butter, and men did 
not then know how to preserve butter by freezing it so 
that it could be sent across the world. The Danish 
farmers, therefore, gave up growing so much grain (they 
now grow some oats, less barley and rye, and a very little 
wheat) and kept more cattle, obtaining and carefully 
breeding those kinds which yield most milk. A machine 
was invented for separating rapidly the cream from the 
milk ; the skim milk is partly used for making cheese 
and partly sent back to the farmers for feeding their 
animals. Some of the cream is sent away as cream, but 
most of it is turned into butter. This work, and indeed 
most of the work in the dairies, is done by machines, and 
modern science has been applied to the methods with 
great thoroughness. Moreover, so many animals are 
Jkept that they cannot be fed on the pastures and crops 
of Denmark, and large quantities of cattle food, including 
barley, maize, and oil-cake, are imported from abroad. 

Thus the dairying industry may almost be compared 
with a manufacturing industry, for to some extent the 
cattle take the place of machines. The raw material (in 
this case cattle food) is imported, the commodities (in 
this case dairy produce) are made in the country itself, 
and a large proportion of the products is exported to 
neighbouring countries, especially Britain and Germany, 
in exchange for the food, clothing, and other necessities 
of the people engaged in the work. The use of machines 
in the dairies necessitates the importation of coal, and 
this is obtained from England, for it costs no more to 
carry coal from Newcastle to Copenhagen than to London. 

A very important feature of the industry is the 
development of co-operation. The farmers in a district 
join together to establish a large dairy which they own 
in common ; their milk is taken to this co-operative 
dairy and they share in the profits of the manufacture of 



DENMARK 39 

the cream, cheese and butter. Similarly there are co- 
operative societies for collecting and exporting the eggs 
which are obtained in enormous numbers, and co-opera- 
tive slaughter-houses to which the pigs are sent. 

The farmers needed money to stock their farms with 
the best kinds of cattle, to purchase cattle food from 
abroad, and to build their dairies and equip them with 
machinery ; this capital had to be borrowed, and for 
this purpose co-operative credit societies were formed, 
in which the farmers join together to borrow the money 
and then lend it to the particular people who need it. 
Much of this capital is borrowed from abroad, and part 
of the produce which is exported goes to pay the interest 
on the borrowed capital. 

Another great help to the very successful dairy industry 
is education. The Danish people are well educated ; 
there are very good ** high schools " to continue elemen- 
tary education, and a large number of colleges take 
young men and women for the period between seventeen 
and twenty-five years of age. Also there are colleges to 
teach the best methods of rearing animals and making 
dairy produce, and scientific work is done to extend 
man's knowledge in these matters. The industry has 
flourished because the people are intelligent as well as 
hard-working, and greater nations have sent men to 
study their methods and adapt them to the needs of 
other countries. 

The foreign trade is largely bound up with this 
industry. Copenhagen is by far the largest port, and 
other much smaller ones such as Aarhuus and Aalborg 
are on the eastern side of the mainland, but until recently 
there was no port on the North Sea shores. So a harbour 
was constructed at Esbjerg, particularly to facilitate trade 
with Britain, to which country butter, cheese, eggs, and 
pork are sent, and from which coal and manufactured 



40 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

goods are brought. Also from America and elsewhere 
food for men and cattle is imported. Copenhagen used 
to be well situated for trade, because it is on the island 
of Zealand (Seeland), by the Sound, the most direct 
of the channels leading into the Baltic Sea. But the 
Sound is so shallow that the largest ships have to go 
through the Great Belt, which is deeper, and also the Kiel 
Canal now gives a much more direct entry to the Baltic 
Sea, so that Copenhagen is off the route of much of the 
traffic. Nevertheless it is a large city, with over 600,000 
inhabitants, and is important as being the capital of the 
country. 

SWEDEN 

Sweden is the largest and most important of this 
group of states. In area it is much larger than the 
British Isles, but its resources are so poor that it only 
supports about six million people. It extends from 
Denmark in the south-west to Finland in the north-east, 
and the occupations of its people change according to 
the part of the country they inhabit. 

In the extreme south-west, in the part called Scania 
which adjoins the Sound, the land is exactly like that of 
Denmark, and here dairy-farming and the making of 
dairy produce are the chief industries. Even the co- 
operative system has spread across the Sound to Scania. 
Moreover, Copenhagen is joined by ferry boats to Malmo, 
which lies opposite to it, and is the chief town of this 
part of Sweden. Scania is the only part of Scandinavia 
which has coal deposits, and these are of value to Sweden, 
even though the amount is small and not to be compared 
with that obtained in Britain. Of the remaining part of 
Sweden the chief pastoral and agricultural region is that 
around the belt of great lakes, where the lowlands have a 



SWEDEN 41 

better soil than elsewhere (except in Scania). In these 
more northern parts dairy farming is less important than 
in Denmark and Scania, and the number of people who 
get a living in Sweden by this and other kinds of farming 
{e.g. by growing some oats and rye) is becoming steadily 
smaller. The other occupations have grown as agriculture 
has declined. 

Forestry is important, for more than half the land is 
still covered with forest. For centuries timber has been 
exported, and in recent years the demand has increased, 
particularly with the use of enormous quantities of paper 
made from wood-pulp. So Swedes have gone north- 
ward into the region they call Norrland, i.e. Northland, 
mainly to cut down the forests and prepare and export 
the products. Much more than half of the total exports 
of Sweden consists of timber and timber products ; 
there are mills which saw the larger timber into planks, 
other mills turn the smaller wood into wood-pulp and 
paper, others again cut it into match-sticks and large 
quantities of matches are exported ; also there are some 
furniture factories. 

The mines of Sweden have long been famous. For 
example, the mines at Falun in the valley of the Dal River 
were for nearly 200 years the chief source of copper 
in the world. But greater deposits have now been found 
in other countries, and the amount of copper obtained 
here has greatly decreased. Swedish iron also has been 
famous for centuries. In the times when charcoal only 
could be used for smelting iron (coal was not employed 
until about 150 years ago) the mines and forests of Sweden 
together gave rise to a considerable proportion of the 
world's output of iron and steel. The importance of 
Sweden in this respect became less as other countries, 
particularly Britain, America, and Germany, found they 
had coal and iron which could be used together, but there 



42 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

is still quite a considerable amount of smelting carried 
on in Sweden, and it still uses charcoal as a fuel. This is 
got by slowly burning great stacks of wood in the forests ; 
it is then sent to the blast-furnaces situated in the lake 
belt where the older iron deposits are found. Nearly 
all the iron and steel is made in the district extending 
from the northern shores of Lake Vener to the mouth 
of the Dal River. 

The ore here is being exhausted, but fortunately for 
Sweden much greater deposits have been found elsewhere, 
namely at Gellivaare, and other places in the neighbour- 
hood of the Tornea and Lulea. This is so far north that 
the Baltic Sea and the rivers are frozen over for about 
half the year, and the export is thereby prevented. The 
use of these deposits was therefore kept back until the 
railway had been built from Lulea across the plateau to the 
Norwegian port Narvik, on the Ofoten Fiord, which is 
open all the year round. This is now the chief source 
of Swedish iron ore, which is cheaply exported to Britain 
and other countries of western Europe. Most of the 
iron is sent away in the form of ore, only a small part is 
smelted first, and a still smaller part is made into iron 
and steel goods. Nevertheless, there is a growing manu- 
facture of iron and steel goods in the lake belt region 
and around Dannemora near the mouth of the Dal 
River. Other minerals, particularly zinc, manganese, 
and sulphur, are also obtained. 

Water-power is being increasingly used for the 
various mills dealing with wood, for the iron and steel 
industries, and for railways ; the " northern iron rail- 
way " is now run by electric power derived from water. 
Indeed, most of the machines use water-power, for nearly 
all the coal has to be imported and it is therefore dear, 
and yet less than one-fifth of the total water-power is at 
present utilised. 



NORWAY 43 

The fishing round the south coast gives work to many 
people ; herrings are the chief kind of fish caught, 
and they are sahed and exported. The Kattegat 
waters are most productive in the fisheries, for many 
less fish are obtained in the fresher waters of the Baltic 
Sea. 

It has been shown above how the productive lake belt 
has a continuous waterway through it from the Baltic 
Sea to the Gota River, and so at the mouth of this river 
is the important port Goteborg (Gothenburg). On the 
Baltic side of this lake region, at the entrance to Lake 
Malar, is Stockholm, the capital, a city of nearly half 
a million inhabitants. 

The resources of the country do not provide enough 
work for the increase of the population. In ten years 
this increase would amount to about three-quarters of 
a million people, and although in years when trade and 
industries flourish and expand more people can find work, 
in the poorer years many people have to go abroad. On 
an average, this emigration accounts for nearly half the 
total increase of the population, and in most years many 
thousands of Swedes go to North America, either to 
Canada or the northern part of the United States. 



NORWAY 

Norway is the second largest of the Scandinavian 
states, for its extent is about equal to that of the British 
Isles, but it has considerably less than three milHon 
people, that is, fewer than either Denmark or Finland, 
for much of its area is highland, from which practically 
nothing can be obtained. As the population of Norway 
has increased, so the people have had to buy food from 
abroad (chiefly rye, wheat, and barley) ; the little they can 



44 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

grow is mainly oats and potatoes, as well as fodder for 
their animals. They have followed Denmark in giving 
great attention to dairy farming, and most of their dairies 
are carried on by co-operation ; they manage indeed to 
export dairy produce, and this is largely in the form of 
condensed and canned milk, butter not being so largely 
made. These exports partly pay for the import of food, 
and, as in Sweden, the products of the forests and mines 
are also sent abroad. Timber cutting and sawing, with 
the making of wood-pulp, paper, and matches, form the 
greater part of the small and simple manufacturing 
industries of Norway. 

Norway is like Sweden also in its mining. It has a 
considerable production of iron ore, largely from the 
north. These mines are behind the coast almost on the 
Arctic Circle ; they contain huge amounts of ore, but 
unfortunately the proportion of iron in the ore is small, 
so that a large amount of ore yields only a small amount 
of iron. This prevented the iron being mined, for it 
cost too much to carry away the bulky and not very 
valuable ore, until the great American inventor, Edison, 
devised a method of using electricity to separate out the 
best of the ore which would then pay for the cost of 
transporting it. So at the end of the nineteenth century, 
these ore deposits became valuable and were quickly 
used — a good example of how the resources of nature 
become important to man only when his knowledge 
becomes great enough to take advantage of them. In 
central and southern Norway there are also large deposits 
of iron ore, but they still lack development. Copper 
also is found, and is quite important to Norway ; it 
is found in great amount at Roros near the head of the 
Glommen River, where the railway from Sweden and 
southern Norway goes from this valley over the water- 
parting to the sea at Trondhjem. More recently copper 



NORWAY 45 

has been discovered on the plateau within the Arctic 
Circle, north of the iron deposits. 

Fishing has always been important for the Norwegians, 
and, indeed, it has recently become more important so 
that now there are 100,000 fishermen in this country — 
as many as there are in the British Isles, although our 
population is nearly twenty times as great. The fisher- 
men not only catch cod in the shallows off the shores, 
but go farther away for the herring, and to Arctic waters 
where whales and seals are found. In recent years the 
canning and export of fish have rapidly developed. The 
fishing has greatly helped to make the Norwegians a 
nation of seamen, and skilled in the building of ships. 
Even now that ships are largely made of steel some ship- 
building is carried on, and the Norwegians are still a 
seafaring nation, whose ships and seamen are found in 
all parts of the world. 

It is therefore easy to realise that throughout history 
this infertile land has sent out men to find across the sea 
a living which was impossible for many at home. Here, 
still more markedly than in Sweden, the increase of 
population leads to emigration, more than half of the 
additional people in each generation having to go abroad. 
In early times, they formed the bands under the leaders 
known as Vikings, who raided and settled upon the shores 
of western Europe, including Britain. Many Norse 
names of places show where they occupied the coastal 
lands of North Britain, and spread round to the west of 
Scotland and as far south as the Irish Sea. The people 
of these parts show by their appearance and names that 
they are in part descended from the Norse invaders. 
In France, too, such seafarers founded the settlements 
of the people we know as the Normans, and they ex- 
tended along by the coasts to the Mediterranean on the 
south and, by going from one island group to another, to 



46 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Greenland on the north. They even followed the north- 
western route further still and discovered America, 
centuries before Columbus, although this discovery was 
afterwards forgotten. In early times these seafarers 
might plunder and kill, but in later centuries settlement 
has been peaceful and orderly ; for many hundreds of 
years, therefore, Norway has bred strong hardy men 
who have gone to more favoured lands. 

In the future the development of the water-power 
will give the country a resource it has hitherto never had. 
In the south-west the water-power is very great, for the 
rainfall and snowfall are great, and the water has to fall 
thousands of feet in the short distance between the 
plateau and the sea. Already the people use far more 
power from water than from coal, and they have begun, 
notably at Odde near a branch of the Har danger Fiord, 
a great industry in the making of chemicals. The total 
power resources are probably greater than those of 
Sweden, and though they are not enough to support 
manufactures as great as those of the British Isles, yet 
Norway may quite possibly rise to be a manufacturing 
country with a population much greater than can be 
supported at present. 

The capital is Christiania, with about a quarter of a 
million inhabitants, in the greatest area of lowland, the 
centre from which the Norwegians first spread out 
around the coast ; Bergen is the chief fishing centre, 
and is joined by a railway across the plateau to Christiania. 
Trondhjem is the meeting place of two routes across the 
plateau, one coming from Christiania by the Glommen 
Valley, and the other, further north, from the Baltic 
region and Stockholm. But travel by land is difficult 
and little used ; the Norwegians still follow the sea to 
go from place to place or to exchange their goods. 



FINLAND 47 

FINLAND 

Although seven-eighths of the population of Finland 
are Finns, of Asiatic origin, it has been conquered 
alternately by its greater neighbours Sweden and Russia, 
and of the two Sweden has had by far the greater influence 
upon it. In the earliest times of which there is any 
definite knowledge, there were Scandinavians living in 
the country, and the Finns came in more than a thousand 
years ago. But later, Sweden conquered the land, and 
it was governed by that country until about a century 
ago. During the Swedish rule, however, Finland did 
not have peace, for it was a '* buffer-land " between 
Scandinavia and Russia, the shock of warfare fell upon it 
time after time, and its people suffered in consequence. 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, among the 
changes of the Napoleonic Wars, Russia obtained posses- 
sion of the country, and before the outbreak of the recent 
Great War allowed the inhabitants of Finland very little 
power of self-government. 

Yet the people felt themselves to be a nation and 
claimed their right to an independent parliament, called 
a *' Diet " ; they particularly resented attempts to 
conscribe them into the Russian army, and when a 
revolution broke out in Russia in 1905 they seized the 
opportunity to rise and assert their rights. They gained 
only a short-lived advantage, however, and they had to 
wait until the collapse of the Russian power in the Great 
War enabled them to obtain complete independence. 

At no time did the Russians form any considerable 
proportion of the population or have any influence in 
making the people like Russians in any respect ; but the 
Swedes, on the contrary, form about one-eighth of 
the population, and have had a great influence upon the 
people ; for example, the education and culture of the 



48 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Finns has been largely affected by Swedish people and 
ideas. Until about a century ago, the educated people 
spoke Swedish only, and the language of the ignorant 
Finnish peasants was of no account. But then a teacher 
of the University of Helsingfors collected many old folk- 
songs which had been handed down by the Finns for 
generations, and from them pieced together a long poem, 
called the Kalevala, describing the acts and adventures 
of the old Finnish heroes. This led to a revival of 
the language, helped by the Swedes, until now most of the 
newspapers are printed in Finnish, and it is used in the 
schools, the universities, and the Diet. Swedish influence 
is shown in the religion, for practically all the people 
belong to the Lutheran (Protestant) church, very few 
belonging to the Greek Orthodox (Russian) church. 

The country is but scantily populated, for although 
it is about as large as the whole of the British Isles, its 
population is only about 3,000,000. The least scantily 
populated region is that of the less glaciated coastal 
region of the Gulf of Finland, and it is here that most 
of the Swedish part of the population lives. As regards 
density of population the eastern coastal region, along 
the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia, comes next, and here 
again there are Swedish settlements. The lake region 
has still fewer people, and the northern interior is almost 
uninhabited except for a few people in the river valleys. 

Agriculture occupies more people than any other 
form of work in spite of the unfavourable natural con- 
ditions, but these may be improved, especially by hasten- 
ing the very slow natural draining of the marshy lands 
and by removing (and using as fuel) the peat which covers 
large areas of what may become cultivable land. Rye and 
oats are most grown, there is some barley, but practically 
no wheat. The people used to have to support them- 
selves in respect of food supply, but the other products 



FINLAND 49 

they now export allow them to obtain wheat and rye from 
abroad ; moreover, now that they can import rye for their 
rye-bread, they are growing more oats (for animal food) 
because oats are not so likely to be killed by frost as rye 
is, if the winter frosts occur before the harvest is ripe. 
This has often happened, and then famine comes upon 
the people ; the climatic conditions are so severe that the 
land is just on the " margin of cultivation," and the 
shortening of the summer even by a few days brings 
disaster. Many cattle are kept, and millions of pounds 
of butter are exported to Britain each year. 

The forests of pine and spruce fir which cover more 
than half the country yield timber, and the cutting, 
sawing, and exporting of the wood and its products is 
the chief industry, excluding agriculture. To a small 
extent water-power is already used in the industries, but 
twenty times as much could be obtained as is now em- 
ployed. The large Lake Saima is dammed back by the 
line of morainic hills which run along its south-eastern 
edge, and where this barrier is cut by the out-flowing 
Vuoksen River occur the great Imatra Falls. This is, 
however, only the largest of many rapids which can be, 
and probably will be, used. The most important manu- 
facturing centre is Tammerfors, situated near the western 
end of the morainic barrier ; the water-power is here 
used for paper mills, and for cotton and linen manufac- 
tures. The greater part of the developed water-power 
of the country is used for the making of paper. Iron 
manufactures are increasing, as iron- ore is obtained 
along the southern strip of country, and most likely is 
hidden in greater quantities beneath the glacial deposits 
and marshes of the interior. 

It may be observed how the group of industries in 
Finland, connected with the forests, the mines and the 
water-power, resemble those of north-eastern Sweden ; 

E 



50 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

similar physical conditions have led to similar economic 
development. Of recent years the population of Finland 
has grown markedly, because of the development of the 
industries and the corresponding growth of trade. 
Helsingfors, which is the capital, is in the centre of the 
most productive and best-populated district, and has a 
very good harbour. It is the largest town, but has less 
than 200,000 inhabitants ; next to it as a trading centre 
comes Abo, which used to be the capital, and had a 
university established when the country obtained its 
freedom. In addition to wheat and rye, the people 
import other foodstuffs such as sugar and coffee, iron to 
supplement their own supply, and cotton, chemicals, and 
other materials for their industries. In exchange for 
these, they export their timber, paper and cardboard, 
some iron and textile manufactures, and the products of 
their animals : viz. leather, hides, and dairy produce. 
Moreover, along the coast many people are fishermen, 
and they have a surplus of fish for export. 

Finland began its history as an independent nation 
less devastated by the Great War than most of the other 
newly formed states, and may enjoy prosperity if peace 
allows the people to develop the country by utilising 
more fully those resources which Nature has provided. 



CENTRAL EUROPE 

Between the Scandinavian lands in the north and the 
Mediterranean region in the south lies Central Europe, 
bordered on one side by the western countries France 
and Belgium, and on the other by the east Baltic and 
Russian lowlands. If the mainland of Europe is thought 



CENTRAL EUROPE 51 

of as stretching from the Ural Mountains south-westward 
to the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain, and Portugal, 
Central Europe may be thought of as lying directly across 
the centre of it, and so extending from the North Sea and 
Baltic Sea on the north-west to the Black Sea on the south- 
east. 

Its river systems emphasise this situation of Central 
Europe, for they form two groups : one set flow to the 
north-west, the Rhine and Elbe to the North Sea and 
the Oder and Vistula to the Baltic Sea ; the other set 
unite to form the Danube and flow on the whole south- 
eastward to the Black Sea. 

The states which make up Central Europe may be 
grouped somewhat similarly. Holland, Germany, and 
Poland occupy the greater part of the basins of the rivers 
which drain to the north-west, while Austria, Hungary, 
and Rumania are drained by the Danube. Two states 
do not fall clearly into either group : Czecho- Slovakia Hes 
across the water-parting, while Switzerland drains partly 
to the North Sea and partly to the Mediterranean Sea. 

There is another geographical distinction between the 
northern and southern sections of Central Europe. The 
northern section has lowland bordering the seas and, 
further inland, uplands of only moderate height. In the 
southern section there are two great systems of much 
higher mountains, the Alps and Carpathians, and ad- 
joining them the plains of Hungary and Rumania. 

These plains, uplands and mountains of Central 
Europe are so fitted in to one another that the physical 
geography is quite complicated as compared with that 
of the Scandinavian lands, and there is a similar com- 
plication of the peoples, for several races have become 
mingled with one another in the various valleys and 
plains. Hence there are now quite a number of separate 
states in this region ; also the problem of settling suitable 



52 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

boundaries has been particularly difficult, and this region 
is still one of political unrest. 

The Baltic Lowlands. — ^Just as in the Danish 
Peninsula the line of glacial deposits at the edge of the 
old ice sheet (marked II in Fig. i) is an important 
feature, so it is in the lowlands south of the Baltic Sea. 
The line is continued from Denmark southward and then 
eastward behind the Baltic coast, forming a series of low, 
irregular, plateau-like masses to which the name of Baltic 
Heights is sometimes given, from here these heaps 
appear high by contrast with the rest of the land. In 
the eastern part they are broader, and in the irregularities 
of the plateau are found many small lakes. 

When the ice extended as far south as this line, the 
mass of water which melted from its edge could not 
flow northward, for the ice covered the hollow now 
occupied by the Baltic Sea ; nor could it flow southward, 
for there the land rose to the uplands and highlands. 
Indeed, these highlands themselves were covered by 
another mass of ice, from which water drained northward, 
meeting that resulting from the melting of the ice from 
Scandinavia. Hence there was a great accumulation of 
water between the edge of the northern ice sheet and the 
central uplands, and most of this water drained away 
westward in great rivers flowing to the North Sea region. 
These rivers had far more water in them than any rivers 
of this part to-day ; they cut deep and wide valleys, and 
deposited great masses of gravel in their beds. At one 
time and another during the Ice Age several such streams 
flowed westward or north-westward in more or less 
parallel courses, which here and there joined one another 
until they united in what is now the lower part of the 
valley of the River Elbe past Hamburg to the North Sea 
(see Fig. 2). 



CENTRAL EUROPE 



53 




54 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

When the climate was warmer and the ice had re- 
treated, there was no longer the great mass of water 
from the north, and many of the valleys were left dry. 
Also the drainage from the south could now go north- 
ward into the Baltic Sea, and so at certain points the water 
left the westward channels and turned northward. Thus 
the present rivers to some extent follow the old glacial 
valleys, but have sharp angles where they turn to the 
Baltic Sea. 

By referring to Fig. 2, it may be seen that the Vistula 
in its middle course near Warsaw flows on the whole to 
the north-west until it is about 100 miles from the Baltic 
Sea ; then, just before reaching Bromberg, it turns at 
right angles, and its lower course is almost north-eastward. 
From Warsaw as far as this turn its valley is very broad 
and marshy, with gravels dropped by the old glacial 
waters, and this valley with its gravels is continued west- 
ward by the town of Bromberg, although the river has 
left it and turned to the north. Further to the west the 
same broad valley has in it a small stream, the Netze, 
which flows westward till it joins the Warthe, a tributary 
of the Oder ; both the Warthe and the Oder for part 
of their course follow the same line. Thus the same 
great valley is occupied in turn by parts of four rivers, 
but the Vistula is at one end and separate from the other 
three ; men have, therefore, taken advantage of the 
continuous valley to make a canal joining the Vistula 
to the Netze, and so to the Warthe and Oder. The 
valley is not long occupied by the Oder, which breaks 
out, turning sharply to the Baltic, but it can be followed 
still further westward, partly occupied by marshes, 
partly by streams. It passes to the north-west of Berlin 
and becomes the lower course of the Elbe. Here, again, 
canals have been constructed, so that there is continuous 
river and canal communication from the Vistula, by 



CENTRAL EUROPE 55 

the lower Oder, to the lower Elbe and so to the North 
Sea. 

Another great line of inland navigation begins with 
the Upper Oder not far from the Carpathian Mountain 
region. Past Breslau the river flows north-westward in 
a great glacial valley. Then just before reaching Frank- 
furt it turns northward, but the valley is continued 
straight on, and after about twenty miles a stream called 
the Spree comes into it and follows its course westward. 
In the gap between the Oder and the Spree a canal was 
made so that traffic can go from the Oder to the Spree, 
on which Berlin stands, and onward in the same direction 
by river and canal to the Elbe. Hence Berlin is the centre 
of far-reaching water communications. 

The upper Elbe also flows north-westward first through 
Bohemia, and then through Saxony, but it turns sharply 
northward at Magdeburg. But in this case the line of 
gravels also turns, showing that the old glacial drainage 
did not go straight on. If the north-westerly direction is 
continued past Magdeburg, another stream is indeed soon 
found, the Aller, a tributary of the Weser, but although 
there would be no difficulty in cutting a canal between 
the Elbe at Magdeburg and the Aller, no canal has actually 
been cut, and water traffic has to follow the Elbe. 

Thus just as the old glacial waterways came together 
at the lower Elbe, so the inland water traffic of all central 
and eastern Germany, and even of Poland, can be directed 
to the lower Elbe, and can pass directly through the port 
of Hamburg to the North Sea without going first to the 
Baltic Sea. 

On the Baltic coast of Central Europe there are three 
inlets to which large rivers drain, the Oder and Vistula 
already mentioned, and the Niemen farther to the east. 
These inlets are partly shut off from the sea by long 
narrow strips of land. In the case of the Vistula and 



56 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Niemen the lagoons (called " HafFs ") are enclosed by 
sand washed along by currents which are drifted eastward 
by the prevailing westerly winds. The land behind the 
coast is generally fertile until the line of glacial heights 
is reached. Then it is infertile and little used, largely 
covered with woods or heaths, and dotted with lakes and 
swamps. 

Further south is the great expanse of plain cut by the 
wide, gravelly, and in parts marshy, valleys, but otherwise 
moderately productive. This region was beyond the 
reach of the ice sheet during the later parts of the Ice 
Age, but was covered much earlier. This earlier period 
was so very long before the later one, that although 
morainic deposits were left by the ice they have since then 
been so smoothed out that the surface is fairly regular, 
for the chief features are due to streams supplied with 
water at first by melted ice and later by rain. It has 
been explained how certain great gravelly channels were 
formed, but between these channels the ground is covered 
with finer soil broken and ground up by the ice and spread 
out by smaller streams and even by the action of the wind. 
At one time, winds played an important part by catching 
up the finest particles from the morainic deposits and 
blowing them southwards over these plains, and even over 
parts of the uplands still further to the south. These 
wind deposits form the fertile soil known as " loess," 
found widely spread in Europe over the regions lying on 
the southern borders of the great ice sheet. 

The North Sea Lowlands. — The lands south of the 
North Sea have been less affected by ice than those 
south of the Baltic Sea, for only in its earliest extension 
did the ice sheet cover this part. There are no lines of 
morainic hills studded with marshes and lakes, but water 
from the ice brought masses of sand and gravels which 



CENTRAL EUROPE 57 

were dropped in an irregular way, so that in parts there 
are great heaps of gravel. These form patches of sterile 
country rising above the lower land. There are several 
such areas west of the Elbe ; the largest lies to the south 
of Hamburg, and is called the Liineburger Heide. The 
word " Heide " in German means " heath-land," and 
this district is a low plateau-like country extending 
parallel to the lower Elbe for more than 100 miles, with 
a gravelly soil in which boulders are strewn. For the 
most part it is covered with heather and coarse grass, 
and is used only as pasture land for a few sheep ; here 
and there shallow hollows hold a little more moisture in 
the soil, and in them small groups of trees may grow. 
Another large area lies further west, on the border between 
Germany and the northern part of Holland, and here 
similar country is called '' Geest." A third and smaller 
district lies across the boundary between the south of 
Holland and Belgium ; the Dutch call it the '* Kempen- 
land," and the Belgians call it the " Campine." In 
certain parts, these sandy and gravelly areas have patches 
of bog or moor lying upon them, often of a peaty cha- 
racter. These wet moors are extensive in the region of 
north-east Holland and north-west Germany ; the Dutch 
call them the " high fens," to distinguish them from the 
very low swampy regions which lie near to the coast. 

Between the sandy heath-lands and the uplands of 
Central Europe, the soil is much better, and consequently 
agriculture flourishes and more people are found. 

On the coastal side of the heath-lands the country is 
quite different. The westerly winds and currents drift 
sand along the coast and wash it up into lines of high dunes, 
which in parts, as in the central stretch of the Dutch 
coast between the mouths of the Rhine and the Zuider 
Zee, make a continuous wall between sea and land, but 
elsewhere are broken and form islands, as in the Frisian 



SS EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Islands off northern Holland and western Germany. 
About two thousand years ago there were no breaks in 
the line of dunes, for where there is now the chain of 
islands there was then a continuous coastline of dunes 
about 200 feet high and 3 miles broad. Behind this 
barrier the rivers, especially the Rhine and the Maas, 
brought down sediment which collected until a delta- 
like mass was built up ; in parts there was less accumula- 
tion, and water remained in hollows, for example, there 
was a lake in the place now occupied by the Zuider Zee. 

Then the land very gradually sank down. This was 
due to the loose river-mud settling down to a more 
compact condition, and perhaps also due to the solid 
ground beneath sagging down very slightly ; conse- 
quently the wall of dunes was lower, and the sea threatened 
to flood the land behind. The inhabitants then built 
walls or dykes along the line of dunes to protect themselves 
and for a time were successful, but in time of warfare, 
from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, the dykes 
were neglected. At last sea water broke in over parts 
of the dune barrier, leaving a chain of islands. It sub- 
merged much of the marsh lands, and turned the large 
lake into a part of the sea. Fishermen on the islands 
called the great area of water to the north of them the 
North Sea, and this new and smaller area to the south, 
the South Sea, i.e.^' Zuider Zee." 

The rivers still bring down great masses of alluvium, 
and some of this is dropped in their beds as they flow 
more slowly near the sea. Also in flood time their waters 
overflow their banks and alluvium is dropped on either 
side of the rivers. Thus the bed and banks are both 
built up till the water is flowing along a kind of embank- 
ment, higher than the country on either side, though 
prevented from overflowing by the banks. This is a 
dangerous state of affairs, for floods may break through 



CENTRAL EUROPE 59 

the banks, and the rivers turn into the lower country 
where they spoil the fields, destroy buildings, and drown 
cattle and people. The inhabitants must, therefore, 
make river-dykes on the banks as well as sea-dykes on 
the coast. 

Much of Holland, in particular, has to be constantly 
protected from flooding by sea or rivers. Almost the 
whole of the western part of the country is actually below 
the level of the sea, and has been made habitable and useful 
in ways that will be described later, while large areas in 
Holland and also in Germany near the courses of the 
great rivers are below river-level though above sea-level. 

The North Sea is very shallow, and its plateau-like 
*' banks " nearly reach the surface. These banks, of 
which the Dogger Bank is the most important, are very 
productive fishing grounds, resorted to by fishermen 
from all the countries around. Besides the Norwegians 
already mentioned, the British and Dutch have large 
fishing fleets, obtaining herring, plaice, haddock, and cod. 
The waters of the Zuider Zee are brackish, and every 
spring anchovies migrate from the Mediterranean by 
way of the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, into the 
Zuider Zee, where they are caught by the Dutch fishermen. 

Travellers going from the sea inland would cross 
several belts of country. There is first the belt of sand 
dunes, or sandy islands ; next, there is either behind the 
coast a stretch of very low land artificially protected and 
drained, or behind the islands there is an area marked as 
sea on the map, but actually covered by water only at 
high tide. At low water it is a stretch of sand, and even 
when the water covers the sand, only very small boats 
can use it, for it is so shallow. Only where rivers come 
into the sea, and have a current strong enough to wash 
away the sand and keep a channel clear, can larger boats 
cross this stretch. Even in these channels, and in the 



6o EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

rivers behind, dredging has to be continually carried on 
to allow traffic to get past this coastal barrier. Next 
comes the low country built up of river alluvium, clay 
and peat, which is usually marshy in its natural state. 
Then there are the large patches of glacial gravel with 
high fens lying upon them. Finally, there is the fairly 
fertile land above river-level which rises gradually to the 
uplands. 

The people of the coastal strip are fishermen ; the 
land below sea-level, even when drained, is damp and 
generally used for keeping cattle rather than growing 
crops ; the country adjoining the rivers is used both for 
crops and pasture, the glacial gravels are little used, and 
the country of moderate elevation adjoining the central 
uplands is employed for agriculture of all kinds. 

In past centuries the greater part of the North Sea 
lowland region was covered with forest. In the forest- 
clearings west of the lower Elbe lived the Saxons, and 
on the other side of the river were the Angles ; tribes of 
these peoples migrated across the sea to Britain and 
formed the chief element in the population of England ; 
hence the similarity between the peoples and their lan- 
guages on the two sides of the North Sea. 

The rivers which cross the lowlands carry much 
traffic, in spite of the unfavourable coast, between Central 
Europe and the North Sea. East of the Elbe are the Weser 
and the smaller Ems, each flowing into a large shallow 
inlet. Only small streams flow into the Zuider Zee, 
and south of it are the mouths of the Rhine and Maas, 
with several connected channels, two of which are called 
the Lek and the Waal. The delta of the Rhine and Maas 
has a number of shallow waterways and islands, and into 
its southern end drains the Schelde, which flows eastward 
across Belgium so that its mouth is in Holland. The 
Rhine is connected with the Ems by the Dortmund- 



CENTRAL EUROPE 6i 

Emden canal. At or near the mouths of the rivers are 
great ports, and in the North Sea lowland region as a 
whole commerce, agriculture, and pastoral work together 
support quite a dense population. 

The Western Uplands. — Going up the Rhine near 
Cologne (Koln) a man would be in an angle of lowland 
wedged into an upland plateau. The lowland gradually 
narrows till it practically disappears and the river for about 
seventy miles south of Bonn flows in a deeply-cut winding 
valley, with steep slopes quite close to the stream. 
Tributaries in similar narrow valleys join the main stream ; 
the most important is the Mosel, and the name of the town 
Coblentz is derived from its situation at the confluence of 
the Mosel and Rhine. The upland plateau as a whole 
is called the Rhine Massif {i.e. mass or block of high 
country), and the deeply-cut winding valleys divide it 
into parts which have particular names, e.g. the Eifel 
which lies north of the Mosel. In the valleys are villages 
and small towns, and seen from the rivers the country is 
beautiful, with steep slopes cut by ravines and often 
covered with woods ; in warm and sunny spots vineyards 
have been made on terraces, and quite a number of 
castles were built where precipitous cliffs beneath them 
offered security from attack. Through the valleys, roads 
and railways in addition to the rivers penetrate the 
plateau, and allow communication between the northern 
plains and the lands of Central and Southern Europe. 

On the plateau a very different scene presents itself. 
It is flat-topped and dull in appearance, the narrow 
valleys are not seen until one is close to them, the ground 
is hard and so level that it is often ill- drained, and marshes 
and bogs are common ; trees are scarce, little agriculture 
can be carried on, and the region is almost desolate. 
The Eifel is the most interesting part, for there are a 



62 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

great number of small volcanic cones to diversify the 
scenery, and some of the many tourists who visit the Rhine 
valleys go also to the Eifel. The plateau region west of 
the Eifel is called the Ardennes ; this is in Belgium, and 
its wooded valleys are as attractive as those of the German 
regions. 

The hard rock of the plateau has some minerals in it, 
for example, some iron is found in the part which lies 
east of Bonn. At the northern edge of the Massif, east 
of the Rhine, is a strip of country of lower elevation in 
which iron and great quantities of coal are found. Under 
this edge of the plateau runs the Ruhr river, which joins 
the Rhine at Duisberg, and here is the Ruhr coalfield, 
sometimes known as the Westphalian coalfield, as this 
part of Germany is called Westphalia. Because of the 
coal and iron the Ruhr district has developed into one of 
the most important and most densely populated manu- 
facturing regions in the world. A similar, but smaller, 
coalfield is found on the opposite side of the Rhine, 
along the edge of the Ardennes part of the Rhine Massif. 
Only a very small part of this western coalfield belongs 
to Germany ; the greater part of it lies in the valley of the 
Meuse in Belgium, and a smaller part extends into 
France. 

Above Mainz, and as far as Basel, the Rhine is in a 
valley quite different from that just described. This 
upper valley is broad, being on an average about 20 miles 
wide, and it is nearly 200 miles from north to south. 
Through it the stream wanders slowly over flat ground, 
partly built up of the alluvium it has deposited in the 
past. This is a country of prosperous agriculture, with 
many villages and towns. The river is navigable for 
small boats, and much commerce and even manufactures 
are carried on in the greater cities which are built by 
the river or its tributaries. 



CENTRAL EUROPE 63 

On each side of the great valley are plateaus with 
steep slopes facing the Rhine ; the tops of the plateaus 
are not level, for on the whole they slope gently in the 
direction away from the Rhine and are cut up by river 
valleys. Woods cover most of the higher parts and the 
steeper slopes. The western block is high in the north, 
lower in the centre just north of Strasbourg, and highest 
of all in the south, where it is called the Vosges Mountains. 
In the central lower part, north of the Vosges, is the pass 
known as the Col de Saverne, by which a road, a railway, 
and a canal join Strasbourg and the French part of the 
Rhine valley to the French lowlands on the west side of 
the block. The opposing eastern block is similar in 
form ; in the north is a high mass east of Mannheim, 
in the centre a lower part, and the highest part in the south 
is the Black Forest Mountains. 

The two blocks are very similar in other respects ; 
they are made of the same rocks and their appearance 
corresponds. This similarity is not accidental ; it is 
due to the fact that they are two parts of what was one 
great mass, in a very distant period. Before even the 
Ice Age, the crust of the Earth was so disturbed here by 
great pressures within, that two great faults occurred 
where the steep slopes of the blocks now face the plain. 
On either side, the ground was raised to form the high- 
lands, while between them the ground gave way so that 
the valley was formed. A valley let down in this way 
between parallel faults is called a Rift Valley, and this 
particular one is frequently termed the Rhine Rift Valley, 
while the Vosges, the Black Forest Mountains, and the 
Rhine Massif are all termed '' Block Mountains." 

The Rhine enters the Rift Valley at Basel, between 
the Black Forest and the Jura Mountains ; these will be 
described in a later section. 

Most of the streams of the western block do not run 



64 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

directly to the Rhine, but flow westward down the gentler 
slope. The Vosges mass is drained by the upper part 
of the Moselle. This part is the French province of 
Lorraine, and so the name is spelled " Moselle " in the 
French fashion ; where the river turns to the north-east 
through the Rhine Massif the country is German, and 
the name is spelled " Mosel." In the middle part of the 
Moselle valley are very important iron deposits which 
have for many years been a source of conflict between 
France and Germany. The northern part of the block 
is drained by the Saar (or Sarre) tributary of the Mosel, 
and in the central part of the Saar's course and on the 
north-east side of the river is the Saar coalfield, also 
an object of desire by both France and Germany. This 
region in general, lying between France and Germany, 
has been of very great importance in the history of the 
two countries, and what has occurred here both before 
and after the Great War must be explained more fully 
later. 

The eastern block is drained largely by two rivers, 
the Neckar and Main, which at first flow northward in 
winding or zigzag courses, and then turn westward into 
the rift valley ; the Neckar enters the Rhine at Mann- 
heim, and the Main at Mainz, both of which places are 
busy river ports. 

On the south-east side of the basins of the Neckar and 
Main, the land rises in a very marked step, like a huge 
terrace, to a higher plateau. This is commonly called 
the Bavarian Plateau, for much of it belongs to the Ger- 
man state of Bavaria, but the south-eastern corner is a 
part of Austria. Its terrace-like edge continues the line 
of the Jura Mountains ; it is sometimes called the Swabian 
Jura in the part overlooking the upper Neckar basin, and 
the Franconian Jura in the north-easterly part over- 
looking the upper Main basin. These two river basins 



CENTRAL EUROPE 65 

form pleasant fertile country, but the Bavarian Plateau 
is less pleasant and less useful. It is drained by streams 
flowing northward across it from the Alps to the Upper 
Danube. This great river rises where the Bavarian 
Plateau joins the highest part of the Black Forest Moun- 
tains, and it runs close to the edge of the plateau north- 
eastward till it meets the high ground near the Bohemian 
Forest Mountains ; then it turns to the south-east at 
first under the slopes of these mountains and then be- 
tween them and the Alps. In the Ice Age the whole of 
the Alpine region was covered by ice, and the Bavarian 
Plateau received from its melting great masses of water 
bearing sands and gravels ; these gravels cover much of 
the ground of the plateau, rendering it rather infertile, 
and in parts the glacial deposits blocked up the river 
channels, preventing drainage and making lakes ; some 
of these lakes still remain and others have been partly 
drained, but their sites are still marshy and almost useless. 
Thus the Alpine ice sheet, as well as the much greater 
northern ice sheet, affects the prosperity of the people 
of to-day. 

The Eastern Uplands. — The Bohemian Forest Moun- 
tains form the south-western side of the diamond- 
shaped Bohemian Plateau. At the northern end of the 
Bohemian Forest Mountains is a group called the Fichtel 
Gebirge ; in German this means " Fir Mountains," and 
it is an example of the practice of naming mountains from 
their appearance, for they are largely covered with fir 
trees ; similarly the Black Forest Mountains are named 
because of their dark masses of fir trees. The Fichtel 
Gebirge form the v/estern corner of the Bohemian 
" diamond," and its north-western side is formed by the 
Erz Gebirge ; this name means " Ore Mountains," but 
most of the ores that used to be obtained here have been 

F 



66 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

used up. The northern slope of the Erz Gebirge is a 
gradual one, and forms part of the state of Saxony, where 
some coal and a little silver are mined. The north- 
eastern side of the Bohemian *' diamond " is clearly 
marked by the Sudetes Mountains, but the fourth side, 
on the south-east, is less clear, for it is a rather flat water- 
parting between the streams flowing northward to the 
Elbe and those flowing southward to the Danube or its 
tributary the Morava (or March). 

The Bohemian plateau forms the upper basin of the 
Elbe river which breaks through the northern part of 
the Erz Gebirge in a narrow valley. The interior part 
of the plateau slopes northward, in the direction in which 
its rivers flow. The southern part is therefore higher, 
and as it is of hard rock it is not very fertile ; the northern 
part is lower, and deposits of softer soil have covered the 
older and harder rock, so that the northern part is niore 
fertile and can support a greater population. Moreover, 
the central and northern part has a rather small amount 
of coal and a larger amount of lignite, or brown coal, 
which gives less heat but is nevertheless largely used as 
fuel. It has also some other minerals, and these resources 
help to make Bohemia a productive and busy region. 
When as a result of the Great War the Czechs who live 
in Bohemia broke off from Austria, this region became 
the most important part of the new state of Czecho- 
slovakia, and left Austria very much poorer by its loss. 

The Bohemian plateau and the mountain masses that 
surround it are all formed of blocks like those of the more 
western uplands. Faults have occurred along the edges 
of the plateau, and the internal disturbances in the Earth 
have forced up the blocks on the outer sides and let down 
the block in the centre, especially in the north. The 
faults on the Bohemian side of the Erz Gebirge are 
particularly well marked, giving a very steep edge to the 



CENTRAL EUROPE 67 

mountains, and through the faults waters are still forced 
upwards to the surface ; the waters have dissolved 
certain salts which have medicinal properties, and so 
their springs have become the sites of health-resorts such 
as Marienbad (bad=bath) and Karlsbad. 

Near the centre of the eastern side of the Sudetes, 
south of Breslau in Silesia, is a small coalfield, while a 
much larger one lies to the east of the southern end of 
the Sudetes, on the other side of the valley of the upper 
Oder, in Upper Silesia, and close to the headwaters of 
the Vistula and Warthe. Just as the Saar coalfield has 
been desired by both France and Germany, so this 
Upper Silesian coalfield has been the cause of quarrels 
between Germany, Poland, and Czecho- Slovakia, for it 
lies in the region where these three states approach one 
another. 

It will be noticed that the seven coalfields mentioned 
are all closely connected with the block mountains of 
Central Europe ; the Belgian field with the Ardennes, 
the Westphalian or Ruhr field with the northern edge of 
the Rhine massif, the Saar field with the north-western 
part of the Vosges block, the Saxony field with the Erz 
Gebirge, the Bohemian field with the central block of 
the " diamond," and the Silesian fields with its eastern 
edge. These are the most important coalfields of the 
continent of Europe, with the exception of one in south 
Russia, and they are the foundation of much of the wealth 
and power of this region. Before the war most of these 
deposits belonged to Germany, and were a chief cause 
of its growth, and during the war they were the source 
from which the munitions of the Central Powers were 
derived. 

The Fichtel Gebirge is not only the meeting point of 
the Bohemian Forest Mountains and the Erz Gebirge, 
but north-westward from it runs a narrow high block, 



68 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

bounded by faults, called the Thuringian Forest. Around 
the Thuringian Forest is a hilly country, very varied in 
its relief, pleasant in appearance, largely occupied by 
fertile fields diversified with woods ; much of this 
country is drained by the upper Weser and its tributaries. 

Further to the north there is another great block, 
the Harz Mountains. Its faulted edges stand up boldly 
above the lowlands ; they are clothed with forests and 
cut up into ravines by the streams which flow rapidly 
down on all sides. The Harz Mountains, like the Rhine 
valleys, are visited by many tourists, especially from the 
German cities. This block, like so many others, has 
mineral wealth ; in the past quite a number of minerals 
have been obtained, but now only copper and silver are 
notable. On its north-eastern margin, however, there 
are very great deposits of salts, both common salt and 
potassium salts, with which a great chemical industry 
has been built up. 

The Central Uplands, therefore, have forestry on their 
heights and slopes, agriculture in their valleys, and in- 
dustries based on mineral deposits on their margins, 
while trade follows the routes round and through them ; 
consequently they play a very great part in the life of the 
people of Central Europe. 

The Climate o£ Central Europe. — The prevailing 
winds of Central Europe come from the west, that is, 
from the Atlantic Ocean. Hence they have a marked 
influence upon the temperature, especially in the winter. 
At this season, the sun has comparatively little influence, 
for the days are shorter and the sun is lower in the sky 
than in summer time, but the winds bring warmth from 
the North Atlantic Drift. This warmth is given to 
Western Europe first, so that it has a higher temperature 
in winter than Central Europe, while Eastern Europe, on 



CENTRAL EUROPE 



69 



the other hand, has a still colder winter. Fig. 3 shows 
how the temperature changes, on the average, during the 
year at the places named. The average temperature in 



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Fig . 3 . — Average^Temperatures . 



January at Brest (north-west France) is about 43° Fah. 
(11° above freezing point), at Berlin it is about 29° (3** 
below freezing point), and at Moscow it is about 12° 
(20° below freezing point). 



70 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

In the same way, in Western Europe the cold weather 
soon gives place to the warmer weather of summer, and 
the winter is relatively short, while in Eastern Europe it 
takes longer for the summer sun to make itself felt, and 
the winter cold lasts longer. Thus, in Fig. 3 it is 
shown that at Berlin there is only a short period during 
which the average temperature is below the freezing 
level (shown by the lower dotted line), while at Moscow 
the temperature curve does not rise above the level of 
32° Fah. until the end of March, and falls below it again 
near the end of October. Thus Central Europe is a 
transition region, between the west with its short, mild 
winter, and the east with its long, severe winter. Even 
in Central Europe itself a difference may be noted between 
west and east. The North Sea lowlands have an average 
temperature during January of a little over freezing, 
while the Baltic lowlands are just below the freezing point. 
Consequently the rivers and harbours of the west are 
usually free from ice at mid- winter, while those of the 
east are frequently frozen. The length of time which 
the frost lasts increases as one goes eastward, so that the 
Vistula is normally ice-blocked for nearly three months, 
from December until February or even until March. 
Similarly the showers of snow which fall on the western 
region usually thaw and disappear quite soon, but those 
which fall on the eastern part may remain unmelted 
until the spring ; then the accumulated mass of snow 
melts at one time, the water runs into the streams, the 
rivers overflow and the lower lands are flooded. 

The upper dotted lines in the diagrams of Fig. 3 
mark a temperature of 42° Fah., the lowest at which the 
growth of crops can begin. Hence the beginning of the 
growing season for agriculture comes when the tem- 
perature curve rises above this line, i.e. about the begin- 
ning of April for Berlin, but nearly a month later for 



CENTRAL EUROPE 



71 



Moscow. Thus crops in Central Europe get much more 
heat for their growth before midsummer than those of 
Eastern Europe ; they can ripen earUer and are not so 
exposed to the danger of being killed by the first or 
earliest frosts of winter. 

In summer there is not the same difference between 
east and west (compare the July temperatures of Brest, 
Berlin, and Moscow in Fig. 3), for the influence of the 

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Fig. 4. — Average Rainfall. 

wind is not as great as that of the sun. The southern 
parts have the sun higher in the sky than the northern 
parts, and are therefore warmer. On the whole, there 
is about the same temperature all along the southern 
shores of the North and Baltic Seas (about equal to that 
of southern England in the summer), but as one goes 
southward the temperature is greater. Of course, 
allowance has to be made for the height of a particular 



72 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

place, so that an Alpine region is colder than the Baltic 
lowlands, but the plains and valleys of the south are 
warmer than those of the north. Hence the Hungarian 
and Rumanian plains have the hottest summers in Central 
Europe, as they are both low and in the most southerly 
position ; here the summers may be said to be distinctly 
hot, and as this part is sufficiently far to the east to have a 
cold winter, it has the most extreme climate of the central 
European region, and comes near to the east European 
type. 

There is a similar difference between west and east 
in regard to rainfall. The average rainfall at Brest, 
Berlin, and Moscow is shown in Fig. 4. The rainfall 
at London amounts to about 25 inches in the course of 
the year, and if the monthly amounts shown to be received 
at Berlin are added together the annual rainfall there will 
be found to be not much less. The west of the British 
Isles is more rainy, and may be compared with Brest. 
No part of Britain has so little rain as Moscow. 

The Atlantic winds bring rain to the west all through 
the year, and there is no season which lacks rain. In 
the east, however, the rain comes mainly in the summer ; 
in the winter there is less precipitation, and what there is 
comes in the form of snow. This, as explained above, 
remains unmelted and does not moisten the ground nor 
supply water to the rivers till the spring. Hence the 
water supply of Eastern Europe is mainly in spring and 
sum^mer. In Central Europe the difference is less 
marked than further east, so that in rainfall as in tem- 
perature it may be described as transitional between west 
and east. 

This climate with a winter of medium length and 
severity, a summer of medium warmth, and a rainfall 
which is of medium amount, makes possible a great 
variety of vegetation. Coniferous forests clothe the 



THE NETHERLANDS 73 

heights and deciduous forests, particularly of oak and 
beech, will grow on the lower lands ; but they have been 
largely cleared for crops or meadows. The south- 
eastern plains, with their high summer temperature 
and little rainfall, are naturally steppe-laftds covered 
only with short grasses which wither in the hot summer. 

The cultivated plants include practically all those 
grown in any part of Europe, except fruits such as 
oranges and olives, which are found only near the 
Mediterranean Sea. But in the products, as in the climate, 
of Central Europe itself a transition is to be noted ; wheat 
and barley, which need a fairly warm summer, are 
mainly grown in the north-west ; oats and rye, which 
can ripen in a shorter summer, are the commoner grains 
of the north-east ; while maize, which requires the greatest 
summer heat, is found in the south ; in the central part, 
near Vienna, all these may grow. Fruits are wide- 
spread, and even the vine grows everywhere except on 
the plains of the north and the higher elevations of the 
south. 



THE NETHERLANDS 

We generally call the people of Holland the Dutch, 
but they call their country the Netherlands and them- 
selves Netherlanders. The name Holland properly 
applies only to two provinces lying west and south- 
west of the Zuider Zee as far as the mouths of the Rhine ; 
North Holland is west of the Zuider Zee and contains 
Amsterdam, the largest town of the Netherlands ; South 
Holland lies to the south-west of this and contains the 
Hague, the capital, and Rotterdam, the greatest port. 
The Netherlanders are closely akin to the North German 
peoples, and their language is one of the Teutonic group. 

The area of the country is very small, it is about 



74 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

12,600 square miles, i.e, considerably less than half the 
size of Scotland, but it has a population of nearly seven 
million people. This works out to an average of nearly 
550 persons to the square mile, a density of population 
only exceeded by Belgium among the states of the 
continent of Europe, and nearly equal to that of England 
and Wales. 

To a very considerable degree the geography of the 
country and the occupations of the people are dependent 
upon the fact that the Netherlands are largely the delta 
of the Rhine. Practically all the western part of the 
country was a mass of fens and lakes, liable to flooding 
by rivers and the sea, and from earliest times till now the 
people have had to expend labour in building dykes 
round their lands and in keeping the space within them 
drained. The first settlements were on knolls (called 
" pols ") rising out of the fens and enclosed by a wall ; 
later, lower parts were surrounded by dykes, and the 
water in the enclosed areas (called " polders ") was pumped 
out into canals constructed on the top of the dykes ; 
usually the water has to be pumped to other canals 
running along higher dykes until it is taken into the rivers 
or the sea. Windmills used to be employed for pumping, 
but their place is now being taken by steam pumps or 
pumps worked by electricity produced by steam engines. 
On the dykes, too, the roads are made, and the traffic 
helps to press down and consolidate the sandy clay of 
which they are constructed, for stone is very scarce in 
this country. The polders have been gradually extended 
till now most of the country is drained, and there is now 
a scheme for building a dyke across the narrow part of 
the Zuider Zee and reclaiming its southern portion. 

A constant watch has to be kept upon the sea dykes 
and those which border the great rivers ; when the 
Rhine is in flood sentinels are placed at weak places. 



THE NETHERLANDS 75 

The last breaking of the Rhine dyke was over 150 years 
ago ; but as late as 1916 a great storm destroyed the dykes 
by the Zuider Zee and 500 square miles of country were 
devastated. As an additional protection against the force 
of the storm waves, the dunes are now planted with 
shrubs to hold the sand together, and behind them the 
dykes are raised and strengthened by a facing of concrete. 

In the sandy strip of country immediately behind the 
dunes, especially that running north and south of Haar- 
lem, flowers and fruit are largely grown. Over 300 years 
ago Dutch traders brought tulips and hyacinths from the 
East, and the growing of these flowers and the sale of 
the bulbs then began. Since that time the people have 
steadily acquired skill in this work and extended their 
nursery gardens till now great expanses of country are 
brilliant with the flowers in the spring, and immense 
quantities of bulbs are exported to other countries. 
Similarly, many other kinds of flowers, climbing plants 
and evergreens are grown for export, and even " forced '* 
in hot houses, so that blossoms are sent to New York 
throughout the winter. Fruit occupies still more ground 
than flowers, and near the Hague grapes and peaches are 
grown in glass houses and exported to America. Great 
quantities of vegetables are also grown, both for home 
use and for export. 

Cattle-rearing is very important in the region below 
sea-level, which in most parts is too damp for cultivation, 
even when drained. The main object of the farmers is 
to obtain butter and cheese, which are sent largely to 
London and to the German manufacturing districts. 
Most of the dairies are owned by co-operative societies, 
and the selling of farming produce in general is not carried 
on by the farmers, but by officers of a co-operative 
marketing association. 

The land above sea-level but below river-level is 



76 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

mainly between, and on either side of, the Rhine and 
Maas. Here there are " grass districts," hundreds of 
miles in extent, absolutely flat except for the river dykes 
and canal dykes, with few houses or villages, but every- 
where the black-and-white cattle. In other parts of these 
river lands, crops are grown ; corn, sugar-beet, potatoes, 
flax, beans, and onions. 

The lands beneath sea-level or river-level make up 
the greater part of the area of the country, and much of 
the remainder consists of the gravelly regions such as the 
Kempenland of the south-west and the Geest of the 
north-east, which may rise to about 150 feet above sea- 
level. The soil is, of course, very poor, and quite a large 
part of these formations is unused or covered with trees. 
The farmers of these lands grow grass on the lower and 
rye on the higher levels, the rye as food for pigs, and both 
rye and grass for cattle ; thus the farmers obtain pork and 
butter, which are the main exports of the gravelly areas. 

The " high fens " lying upon the gravelly plateaus 
are quite useless in their natural state, but in recent 
years " fen colonies " have been established. The 
surface of the fen is cut into trenches which allow much 
of the water to drain away ; then the peat is cut out and 
dried. It is used for fuel, with the exception of one 
layer which is put back on the sandy subsoil and ploughed 
into it, the mixture of peat and sand forming a good soil. 
The farmers in the fen colonies grow potatoes, rye, oats, 
and beet. Each of these crops is used in a simple form 
of manufacture ; from the potatoes, starch is obtained ; 
from the stalks of the rye and oats, strawboard or mill- 
board is made ; from the beets, sugar is refined. 

The starch and strawboard are exported, but their 
value is far exceeded by that of the butter and cheese, 
the cattle, and the flowers and fruit which are sent abroad 
from the lower lands. The corn crops are not sufficient 



THE NETHERLANDS 77 

for the needs of the population, and wheat and maize are 
imported. 

The situation of the Netherlands at the mouth of the 
Rhine has given great opportunities for trade, and the 
industry of the people and the enterprise of the merchants 
used those opportunities so fully that 300 years ago they 
had nearly all the carrying trade of the world in their 
hands. Fleets numbering four or five hundred vessels 
came twice a year from the Baltic lands, other similar 
fleets twice a year from the Mediterranean region, and 
smaller ones traded with the Indies and other newly 
discovered lands. Indeed, the Netherlanders played an 
important part in discovery, as the old name for Australia, 
New Holland, and the present name of New Zealand 
bear witness. They acquired many colonies, but most 
of them have been lost and the Dutch East Indies are the 
most important of those which remain. In those days 
the Netherlands were not only a centre of trade, but also 
industries were carried on in an advanced manner, and 
the people were famous for their knowledge and their 
progress in arts, such as the printing of books and 
painting. 

A great decline, however, came in the eighteenth 
century as a result of a series of wars with England. 
The Netherlanders were better in the arts of peace than 
in making war, and at the end of the eighteenth century, 
hundreds of their merchant ships were destroyed or 
captured, most of their colonies taken away, and the 
country reduced to want. Moreover, the Netherlands 
had earlier been the scene of struggles between the 
people, who demanded independence, and princes of 
Central or Western Europe who claimed the country as 
their possession. In the nineteenth century, after the 
Napoleonic Wars, the Netherlanders gained complete 
independence, and a long period of peace enabled them 



78 EUROPE OF TODAY 

slowly to regain their prosperity and once more to build 
up their commerce. They are, however, no longer the 
first nation in respect of the number of ships they own, 
for other countries have grown greater than they, but a 
larger proportion of the people in the Netherlands get 
their living by trade than is the case in any other country 
of the continent. 

On the one side of them is the ocean ; on the other 
is the Maas, which runs through the Belgian coalfield, 
and the Rhine, which has the most productive parts of 
Germany on its banks and also leads to the Mediter- 
ranean region. The Netherlanders have dredged and 
straightened the rivers, and in parts cut entirely new 
channels for them, and the largest ocean liners can now 
use Rotterdam, one of the busiest ports of the worlds 
and a town of 500,000 inhabitants. The ocean liners 
cannot go above Rotterdam, so the goods have to be 
loaded or unloaded there, and the traffic above the port 
is carried on in smaller vessels, though ships of medium 
size, able to cross the North Sea and trade with England, 
can go up the Rhine as far as Cologne. In addition, 
there are the larger river craft which ply between the 
German river ports and Rotterdam (of which about ten 
are needed to transport the cargo of a great ocean liner), 
and great numbers of barges and small boats. Much of 
the traffic in the Netherlands is carried on by boats and 
barges on the canals, which are far more used than the 
few and neglected canals of Britain. 

At present, by far the greatest amount of trade is 
carried on at Rotterdam, but in the past Amsterdam was 
more important. It is situated on an inlet of the Zuider 
Zee, which gave shelter to the small vessels of past 
centuries, and was deep enough to accommodate them. 
It is too shallow, however, for modern ships, and a canal 
was cut from the entrance to the Zuider Zee along the 



THE NETHERLANDS 79 

province of North Holland, but this '' North Holland 
Canal " soon became out of date, and a much broader 
and deeper one was cut almost directly westward, the 
*' North Sea Canal." The trade now carried on at 
Amsterdam is largely connected with the goods produced 
or consumed in the Netherlands and is not to any large 
extent through-traffic like that of Rotterdam ; but in 
past times Amsterdam was the centre to which the great 
fleets came from overseas. The city is the largest in the 
Netherlands (over 600,000 inhabitants), partly because 
it retains many industries which grew up when it was the 
chief port, and partly because it is a residential city in 
which well-to-do people choose to live. The Hague is 
also a residential city and the seat of the Government ; 
it has less than 400,000 inhabitants. 

The manufacturing industries of Holland are numerous, 
and although none is very large, the total is considerable. 
Many of them arose for some particular reason in earlier 
times when coal and iron were not necessary, and they 
still manage to exist even though these minerals are lacking 
in the Netherlands. A very small amount of coal is found 
in the extreme south, where a strip of territory near 
Maastricht is thrust like a peninsula between Germany 
and Belgium and reaches the coal-bearing edge of the 
Ardennes massif. Coal and iron and steel goods are 
imported, and so are many of the manufactured goods 
required by the people, but some textiles are manu- 
factured, namely cotton, woollen and linen goods. 

The cotton industry began in the eighteenth century, 
and is chiefly carried on at Utrecht. The making of 
earthenware is another ancient industry, and the small 
town Delft, near the Hague, has given its name to Delft- 
ware. The trade in tobacco and the making of cigars 
originated in the importing of tobacco-leaf from the Dutch 
East Indies, and the sugar obtained from the sugar-canes 



8o EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

of the same colonies led to the refining and selling of 
sugar. When, later, sugar was obtained from beet, the 
beet-sugar industry was added to that of cane-sugar. 
The precious stones brought from the East to Amsterdam 
were the cause of a settlement of jewellers and the growth 
of a diamond-cutting industry which still continue in 
Amsterdam. The making of paper, too, dates back far ; 
it arose when the Netherlanders were pioneers in the 
making of printed books and it still goes on, the materials 
being rags, wood, straw, and waste paper, njostly imported. 
Again, the distilling of spirits is an old industry, now 
using rye, barley, and the molasses obtained as a by- 
product in sugar refining. 

These industries afford good examples of ** geogra- 
phical inertia," that is, the tendency of work to remain 
even after the original causes have disappeared. They 
also show the skill and industry which have enabled the 
Netherlanders to compete with countries which have 
greater resources for manufacturing than themselves. 
Only by such qualities in its inhabitants could the 
unhealthy and frequently flooded marshes of a delta- 
land have been transformed into one of the most 
densely populated regions of the continent. 



GERMANY 

The Great War made very important changes in the 
German State and in the conditions of the German people. 
Before the war the German Empire consisted of a number 
of states which had been in some kind of alliance for 
centuries, and in 1870 they joined together in a war with 
France under the leadership of Prussia, the largest and 
strongest of the German states. After the victory over 
France, they combined to form one Empire, and the 



GERMANY 8i 

King of Prussia became also the German Emperor ; to 
this Empire was added the provinces of Alsace and 
Lorraine, taken from France in spite of the protests of 
their inhabitants. 

During the centuries before the formation of the 
German Empire, the German peoples had developed 
from a mingling of two racial stocks : the people of the 
Northern race living originally in the forest clearings 
of the northern plains, and the people of the Alpine race 
living in the valleys of the southern mountains ; these 
peoples met in the central region of uplands and valleys, 
and here in this country so divided up by nature small 
communities grew up with little permanent union be- 
tween them. In this region of the Central Uplands, 
with its varied resources of agriculture, mining, and 
forest life, the German people (who included the 
Austrians), pursued many arts and crafts, and carried on 
trade ; they were hard-working and successful folk who 
built famous cities, and produced great thinkers, poets, 
and musicians. The greatest musicians of the world 
have come from this region, among whom may be named 
Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schu- 
bert, Schumann, and Wagner. 

In the northern plains the people were less cultivated 
but equally energetic, and here the great military power 
of Prussia grew up, with its seat at the junction of the 
natural routes at Berlin. Because of its success in war, 
Prussia became the leader of the more peaceful states of 
the south, and after the formation of the German Empire, 
the whole country was involved in the " militarism " of 
Prussia. 

An ambition to make the German Empire a great 
state which could not only protect itself, but could 
impose its will upon others, possessed the rulers of the 
country, and they had such power that the people who 

G 



82 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

thought differently from them had very Uttle opportunity 
even of expressing their opinions. The government was 
largely under the personal power of the Emperor, or 
Kaiser, and the Prussian nobles and soldiers formed an 
important part of the ruling class ; the government was 
by no means democratic. 

The military power of a nation depends partly upon 
a strong organisation (such as the Prussian government 
formed in Germany), and partly upon the numbers of 
men and the amount of material which the country can 
supply. In this case, there were great stores of coal by 
which manufactures were carried on, and from which 
trade resulted ; these industries allowed the growth of 
a great population. From this population an enormous 
conscript army was formed, and the factories of the great 
towns provided the means of equipping this army. 

While in Germany itself mining, manufacturing, and 
trading were increasing, and the population and power 
of the country were growing, over-sea colonies were 
obtained, particularly in Africa. 

There were a number of reasons why the interests and 
desires of Austria-Hungary and Germany clashed with 
those of the other states of Europe, but the time has not 
yet come when the causes of the Great War can be 
completely examined. The final results of the war are 
equally: uncertain as yet, but several of them must be 
considered. 

In the first place, the people of Germany, heavily 
stricken by years of fighting and privation, overthrew 
their rulers and established a Republic. The common 
people had at last an opportunity of asserting themselves ; 
the pendulum of power swung in the opposite direction : 
the first President of the Republic had been a saddler, 
and in the new Parliament the Socialists had a great 
majority. The Prussians no longer so completely 



GERMANY 83 

dominated the other states, and although many of the 
old Government officials had to remain (for there were 
no others trained to take their place) the political spirit 
was modified. 

By the treaty of peace signed at Versailles in June, 
19 19, great alterations were made in the territory belong- 
ing to Germany. All the overseas colonies were given 
up, and passed into the rule of the victors, Britain, France, 
Belgium, or Japan, under mandates and the supervision of 
the League of Nations. Alsace and Lorraine were 
restored to France, and many Germans who had settled 
in these provinces since 1870 thereby became French 
subjects. 

Denmark claimed that the district of Slesvig, in the 
southern part of the Danish peninsula, which was taken 
by Prussia in 1864, should be returned, but on the other 
hand many of the people in this region were German. 
It was therefore decided that a plebiscite, that is, a vote 
of all the people of the district, should be taken to decide 
to which state they would prefer to belong. The district 
was divided into two zones, a northern one and a southern 
one, which voted separately ; in the northern zone there 
was a Danish majority and in the southern one a German 
majority. The northern part of the region, therefore, 
went to Denmark, the southern part remained in Germany. 

Poland claimed large areas in the east, for here Prussia 
had conquered Polish lands in past centuries. The 
settlement concerned four different districts. Firstly, a 
strip of territory on the lower course of the Vistula below 
Thorn (near Bromberg), together with the region south 
of this, around Posen, were given to Poland, for they 
were inhabited by a majority of Poles (see the map in 
Fig. 8). Danzig was made into a " Free City," as 
described in a later section. 

Secondly, east of the lower Vistula is a region most 



84 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

of which was known as East Prussia ; the population of 
the north part of this region around Konigsberg, was 
admittedly Prussian, but there were many Poles in the 
southern part, so that a plebiscite was held here. The 
voting was very largely in favour of Germany, and so 
all this area east of the lower Vistula remained to Germany, 
although it is cut off from the mother country by the 
Polish strip of country (the Polish " corridor ") along 
the course of the river. 

Thirdly, a small strip of country north of the lower 
course of the Niemen (or Memel) including the port of 
Memel, on the extreme north-eastern border of Germany, 
was taken with the intention of giving it to the new state 
of Lithuania, for the people were in part Lithuanians, 
and the new state had no other port. 

Fourthly, the possession of the upper part of the 
province of Silesia, on both sides of the Oder above 
Oppeln, was to be settled by a plebiscite. The voting 
showed a German majority in the region as a whole, but 
there were Polish majorities in considerable areas in the 
industrial and coal-mining region of the south-east of 
Upper Silesia. 

After the transfers of territory the area of Germany 
was about half as large again as the British Isles, and its 
population was about 56 millions. 

Because of the damage done to other states during 
the Great War, Germany was called upon to make 
reparation by paying money and giving up other forms 
of wealth, e.g. coal, railway engines and trucks, ships, 
and cattle. The coal-mines of north-eastern France had 
been so damaged that for some years much less coal 
could be got than was obtained before the war ; Germany 
was required to send into France for a number of years 
an amount of coal sufficient to make up the difference, 
and, moreover, the whole of the coal in the Saar coalfield 



GERMANY 85 

was to be ceded to France, As the people living and 
working in this coalfield were German, the district was 
placed under the government of a Commission appointed 
by the League of Nations, composed of five members, 
one being an inhabitant of the region, one from France, 
and three from other countries. This international 
Commission is to govern the country for fifteen years, 
while France is to have the coal. In 1934, the inhabitants 
are to vote for one of three things : a continuation of 
this international control, union with France, or re- 
union with Germany. If the district, or a part of it, 
decides for re-union with Germany, that country will 
have to buy back the mines from France, or the district 
concerned will pass finally to France. Added to this 
loss of coal was the loss of iron ore, for three-quarters 
of the German production came from the Mosel valley in 
the ceded region of Alsace-Lorraine. 

Germany also had to give up practically all her 
shipping, mercantile as well as naval, to the Allied 
Powers, in reparation for the sinking of Allied ships by 
submarines. This put an end, for a long time, to the 
maritime trade of Germany, which had grown very great, 
and it thereby reduced the importance of the German 
ports, such as Hamburg and Bremen, which had been 
the headquarters of the shipping lines. The internal 
trade of the country was similarly hindered by the loss 
of a large part of the equipment of the railways. These 
losses were particularly serious as they came after the 
exhaustion of more than four years of war. 

When it is remembered how the industries of Ger- 
many were based upon the coal and iron deposits, it 
will be realised how grave are the effects of the war 
and the reparations upon the economic life of the country. 
Apart from the coalfields of the Saar and Upper Silesia, 
the only noteworthy ones remaining to Germany are the 



86 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

small one on the north slope of the Erz Gebirge and the 
large one of the Ruhr valley, and these cannot supply 
the needs of such extensive manufactures and trade as 
those which supported the population of Germany. 
Consequently, for many years the greater part of the 
people must be much worse off than they were before 
the war. 

The Ruhr coalfield is by far the greatest manufacturing 
region. Here are great centres of coal-mining and of 
the manufacture of iron and steel goods ; the Krupp 
works are at Essen, and near by are Bochum and Dort- 
mund, and the river port on the Rhine, Duisberg, while 
on the west side of the river is Krefeld, famous for its 
silk and velvet industries. A few miles to the south are 
the textile and chemical manufacturing cities of Barmen 
and Elberfeld, and their river-port Diisseldorf. To the 
south-west is Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), which gets coal 
from the small extension of the Ardenne coalfield and 
manufactures woollen goods. 

On the coalfield of Saxony are Chemnitz, which 
manufactures cotton goods and machinery, Zwickau, 
which makes porcelain, and Dresden, a river-port on the 
Elbe, though " Dresden China " comes from Meissen, 
a little distance down the river. Leipzig, in the lower 
country to the north-west of the coalfield, has much trade 
and various industries, including the making of pianos 
and other musical instruments. 

In Silesia is a group of manufacturing towns in which 
woollen goods particularly are made : Breslau, Gorlitz, 
and Leignitz. 

The capitals of the several states have attracted to 
themselves various industries and considerable trade ; 
and they have therefore become some of the largest 
cities of Germany. Berlin, the capital both of the state 
of Prussia and of the German Republic, is the second 



GERMANY 87 

largest city on the continent ; with its suburb, Charlot- 
tenburg, it had about 2| million inhabitants before the 
war, but this number has been reduced. Bavaria is the 
second largest state, and its capital, Munich (Miinchen) 
in the centre of the Bavarian plateau, has half a million 
people ; it is the greatest centre of beer-brewing in the 
world, and both it and Dresden, the capital of Saxony 
and a city of equal size, have fine buildings and famous 
collections of pictures. Stuttgart, close to the Neckar, 
and Karlsruhe, by the Rhine, are the capitals of the two 
states which come next in importance, namely Wiirttem- 
berg and Baden. 

The position of Berlin, as the centre of the North 
German waterways, is rivalled by that of Hamburg, 
situated at the mouth of the Elbe, where these waterways 
lead out to the North Sea. But Hamburg is not such a 
railway centre as Berlin, for the railway routes to all 
parts of the country radiate from the capital. Hamburg 
was, nevertheless, only second to Berlin in size, and had 
nearly a million inhabitants. After the war, however, 
when the ships were given up, its docks were practically 
deserted for a long time, and trade slowly began again 
when other countries (particularly America) made arrange- 
ments for their shipping services to co-operate with 
German merchants and use the port. Yet with the 
general decrease of German manufactures and commerce 
it will be long before Hamburg recovers its former 
importance. 

Similarly the ports at the mouths of the other German 
rivers, Bremen, Stettin, Konigsberg, and Emden, with 
Kiel at the Baltic entrance to the canal communicating 
with the North Sea, for the time at least lost much of 
their trade. The river-ports of the Rhine are large 
towns ; most important among them is Cologne (Koln) 
at the head of navigation for sea-going vessels, and where 



SS EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the road and railway route from Paris to Berlin, skirting 
the Rhine Massif, crosses the river. Where the Main 
enters the Rhine is situated Mainz, and further up the 
Main is Frankfurt-on-Main, where the routes from the 
Rhine rift valley leave it for the centre and north of 
Germany. At the junction of the Neckar and the Rhine 
is Mannheim. 

The navigation of the Rhine has been put under the 
control of an international commission, and as small 
boats can reach Basel, Switzerland, France, and the 
Netherlands, besides Germany, are concerned in the 
traffic which uses the river. Similarly, the Elbe which 
is navigable into Czecho- Slovakia, the Oder which is 
navigable practically throughout its course, and the 
Niemen as far up as Grodno, were declared international, 
and the supervision of navigation was entrusted to the 
League of Nations so that people of all countries may 
use the rivers on equal terms. 

Although Germany developed greatly on account of 
her mining, manufacturing, and commerce, yet her 
agriculture is very important. The glaciated region of 
the northern plains with a moderate summer temperature 
is the least fertile region, and oats and rye are its chief 
crops, together with potatoes and, in the north-east, beet. 
The potatoes are partly grown for food, partly for distiUing 
alcohol, and the beet is mainly used for sugar but also 
for distilling. Towards the south the soils are better 
and the summers are warmer, and hence more wheat and 
barley are grown than rye and oats. The most fertile 
parts are the Rift Valley of the Rhine, and the other river 
valleys of the south-west. Here the vine is grown on 
the sunny hillsides and famous wines are made. To- 
bacco is obtained in the northern part of the Rift Valley, 
and the production of hops aids the beer-making of 
Bavaria. Fruit trees of many kinds are widely cultivated. 



POLAND 89 

Cattle are everywhere kept, both for milk and dairy 
produce and also for meat, and the number of 'pigs has 
greatly increased, part of their food coming from the 
potatoes and the beet of the poorer northern plains. 

The forests of Germany are well managed, and the 
supply of timber is an important resource, especially in 
the south-west ; here, too, is the famous industry of 
making wooden clocks and toys, still largely carried on 
in the homes of the peasants. 

The Germans improved their agriculture extra- 
ordinarily in the last generation ; for example, in about 
twenty-five years the average yield of wheat increased 
from twenty-two to thirty- two bushels per acre, and an 
official report of the British Board of Agriculture pointed 
out (in 19 1 6) that whereas, on the average, from a hundred 
acres of cultivated land the British farmer produced food 
for between forty-five and fifty persons, the German 
farmer produced food for between seventy and seventy- 
five persons ; as the natural conditions of Germany taken 
as a whole are not markedly better than those of Britain, 
this may be considered as a good illustration of the 
scientific and careful industry which is one of the better 
characteristics of the German people. 



POLAND 

To a considerable extent Poland consists of the basin 
of the Vistula, although its borders are drained by rivers 
which flow through neighbouring countries, for example, 
the Netze and Warthe on the west, and the Niemen 
and Dniester on the east. The absence of natural 
boundaries on the east and west of Poland has been for 
centuries the cause of political disputes and changes. 
The Polish people have tended to spread out beyond the 



go EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Vistula basin, and their great neighbours have similarly 
invaded Polish territory. In the sixteenth century, 
Poland had acquired so much of the neighbouring lands 
that it extended from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, 
and thus resembled the Austria-Hungary of recent times 
in holding sway over subject peoples. The Polish nation 
consisted of two classes, the great nobles and the poor 
peasants, and the Polish nobles became the landowners 
of the conquered lands, especially in Lithuania, in White 
Russia, and in the Ukraine country of East Galicia * and 
south-west Russia. 

The growth of Prussia and Russia led to the loss, 
first of these outer lands, where Polish landowners 
remained though other states conquered the countries, 
and later of the Vistula basin itself, where Poles formed 
the population, and for over one hundred years Poland 
has been divided among Russia, which took most of the 
country, Prussia, which took the west, and Austria, which 
took the Galician region (see the map in Fig. 6). 

After the collapse of the Russian power in the Great 
War, Poland obtained its independence, but the drawing 
of a boundary was a very difficult matter, for besides 
the earlier migration of PoHsh landowners to the east 
and south, there has been a settlement of Germans in 
the western Polish region. It has been explained above 
how the frontier between Germany and Poland was 
determined, but on the eastern side there was even more 
difficulty. The Polish landowners in Lithuania, White 
Russia, Eastern Galicia, and the Ukraine of south-west 
Russia knew that if these regions became independent 
the native peasants would take away their lands and 
either drive them out or kill them, so they wanted Poland 

* Galicia is the plateau region of the Carpathian Foreland, which 
slopes down from the North Carpathians towards the north-east and 
is drained by the upper waters of the Vistula and Dniester. 



POLAND 91 

once more to rule over these regions. Also in Poland 
many people wanted to make their state as large and 
powerful as possible. Hence Poland tried to extend to 
the east, and there was much fighting with the various 
peoples concerned and with the Bolshevik government 
of Russia in 1919—20. 

This warfare followed that of the Great War in which 
German and Russian armies fought over and devastated 
the country, and so the population were reduced to terrible 
conditions. Agriculture suffered greatly. Mining was 
reduced, and manufactures and trade (except as regards 
materials of war) almost came to an end ; starvation faced 
many of the people. Added to this, there were the 
ravages of disease, and typhus fever swept over Poland 
and a considerable part of Eastern Europe, so that in some 
parts more than half the people were affected, and the 
disease seemed likely to spread to the western countries. 
Relief was sent by other peoples in the form of food, 
clothing, and medical help, and the League of Nations 
undertook the task of preventing the spread of the 
disease. 

With the uncertainty of the boundaries of Poland, 
and the miserable situation in the country itself, it is not 
possible to say what the population and area of the country 
are, but it appears that Poland is about the size of Great 
Britain, and its inhabitants number more than twenty 
millions. The people are mainly Poles, but within its 
borders there are Germans, Lithuanians and White 
Russians, and in Eastern Galicia the greater part of the 
people are Ukrainians, here known as Ruthenians (see the 
map in Fig. 8). 

Moreover, there are a very large number of Jews, 
especially in Central Poland and in the towns ; it is 
estimated that half the Jews in the whole world live in 
Poland. The Jews were encouraged to settle in this 



92 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

country some centuries ago, at a time when they were 
persecuted in other lands. This was largely because the 
Polish nobles wished them to carry on trade, for in addi- 
tion to the nobles there were at tkat time only the 
ignorant peasants who worked on the land. In recent 
times, a town population of Poles has grown up who 
compete with the Jews in commerce and industries, and 
mainly on this account there is great ill-feeling between 
Poles and Jews. 

The Jews live apart, and in Central Poland they wear 
a different dress, marked by a black cap and a long black 
cloak, eat different food, speak a different language, and 
are educated in different schools. 

Differences of religion separate the Poles not only from 
the Jews, but also from the other peoples who live both 
within and without the borders of Poland. The Poles 
are strong Roman Catholics, the Germans on the western 
borders are mainly Protestants, and the Russians on the 
east belong to the Greek Church. These differences, 
added to those of race, language, and nationality, make 
the problem of the " minority populations " in Poland a 
very serious one. If the government of Poland does 
not succeed in making these minority peoples into willing 
citizens there will be a great danger of dissensions and 
outbreaks within the country, and a weakening of the 
nation if it has to face a foreign enemy. Only with 
the free consent and co-operation of the great mass of 
the people can the government of any country be 
successful. 

Serious social problems also have to be solved, if the 
people of Poland are to be happy and prosperous. The 
peasants are not well off, judged by comparison with the 
farmers and agricultural labourers of Britain, while in 
the factories of the towns, the conditions of work, the 
hours and wages, are far worse than in western Europe ; 



POLAND 93 

still worse is the state of the home industries and the 
small workshops (e.g. in the clothing trades) in which 
many of the poorer Jews live miserable lives. Peace and 
security, easy import of materials for carrying on the 
work, and a government which can aid in establishing 
and insisting upon decent conditions of life, are the great 
needs of the industrial population. 

Four different regions are to be distinguished in 
Poland, (i) The southern mountain border. This is 
a narrow region formed by the forested ridges of the 
Carpathians. 

(2) The southern plateaus, including the Carpathian 
Foreland. The higher parts are broad uplands divided 
by river valleys ; among these valleys, those of the Vistula 
and Dniester are the largest and broadest, often flooded 
in spring by the melted snows, and in summer by the rain 
from the mountains. This country is partly agricultural, 
with the same products as the central plains dealt with in 
the next paragraph, but to a considerable extent it is 
still wooded, with pines and firs on the higher, and beech 
and oak on the lower lands. 

In this region is the mineral wealth of the country ; 
between the headstreams of the Vistula, Warthe, and Oder 
is the large coalfield ; in the basin of the upper Vistula 
between Cracow and Tarnow are famous salt-mines ; 
to the south-east, near the headstreams of the Dniester, 
is a line of oil wells of great importance, and in one part 
of this district solid petroleum wax is found. 

Metal industries have grown up in the towns of the 
Upper Silesian coalfield, where zinc is obtained, and 
also in the Cracow district, and there are some smaller 
manufactures of chemical and timber products in the 
mineral belt of country. At a meeting place of routes in 
the eastern part of the plateau country is the commercial 
city of Lemburg (Lwow), in which the people are mainly 



94 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Poles, although the peasants of East Galicia are mainly 
Ruthenians. 

(3) The central plains. These were affected by the 
earliest extension of the ice, and in the east the great 
Pripet swamp still bears clear witness to its action, but 
in the west the region is better drained and more fertile. 
Part of the country is still wooded, and the valleys of the 
Vistula and Bug are marshy, but most of the country 
is used either for pasture or agriculture, producing corn 
crops (rye and oats being much more important than 
wheat and barley), potatoes which give the raw material 
for distilling, and beets which give the raw material for 
making sugar. The character of the agriculture differs 
in the regions which used to be under Prussia and Russia 
respectively. In the Prussian country the work was done 
comparatively thoroughly ; in the Russian part it was 
very poorly carried on, and there is great room for 
improvement. 

In this central region there has been a development of 
manufactures, aided by coal from the Upper Silesian 
region and some iron-mining on the northern edge of the 
plateau region. The greatest industries are the making 
of cotton and woollen goods, Lodz being the chief centre ; 
some iron and steel works and sugar refineries are carried 
on at Warsaw. Warsaw has 800,000 inhabitants ; its 
situation on the one great river and in the centre of the 
state makes it the commercial, as well as the political, 
capital of Poland. 

(4) The Vistula " corridor." This consists largely 
of the region drained by the Vistula where it breaks 
through the glacial deposits of the Baltic Heights. The 
economic importance of the district to Poland is perhaps 
as much commercial as agricultural, for it is naturally a 
poor country, but by road, railway, and river it gives an 
outlet to the sea. 



DANZIG 95 

Danzig.—Although when the new state of Poland 
was formed the " corridor " had a PoUsh population, 
and the Vistula route was very important for the trade 
of Poland, yet the port of Danzig was a German city, 
in its buildings, commercial organisations, city govern- 
ment, and population. It was, therefore, arranged that 
as the trade of Poland would pass through it, it should 
belong neither to Poland nor Germany, but should 
become the " Free City of Danzig," under the protection 
of the League of Nations. It has its own government 
for its local affairs, but Poland controls and manages the 
railways, the river and the docks, the trade, and the 
relations between Danzig and foreign states. The area 
extends beyond the city proper to include a considerable 
part of the Vistula delta, and amounts to about 600 square 
miles ; its population is about 250,000 persons. 

Before the war, Danzig carried on trade for the region 
behind, and in addition made armaments and built ships ; 
but after the war the latter industries disappeared, and 
its trade suffered because of the economic disorganisation 
and poverty of Poland. Hence there was great suffering 
among the population, and its prosperity must wait upon 
that of Poland ; in local government it is free, but in 
economic matters and the consequent well-being of its 
inhabitants Danzig is necessarily dependent upon Poland. 
Its exports are mainly of grain, timber, and sugar, and its 
chief imports are manufactured goods. 



96 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

CENTRAL EUROPE— SOUTHERN 
SECTION 

This region includes the Alps and Carpathian Mountains; 
two parts of a great series of highlands which run also 
through the Mediterranean region. On the western side 
the Alps are linked up clearly with the Appennines, and 
the Appennines with the mountains of Sicily. After a 
break these are continued westward in those of north- 
western Africa, and the line then curves northward across 
the Strait of Gibraltar into the south of Spain, where it 
ends in the region of the Sierra Nevada. 

On the eastern side, the Alps broaden, and their 
north-eastern end near Vienna is connected with the 
western chains of the Carpathian system, while their south- 
eastern end near Trieste joins on to the north-western 
mountains of the Balkan Peninsula. The Carpathians 
themselves are continued in the Transylvanian Alps, 
which are divided only by the narrow gorge of the Danube 
from the Balkan Mountains properly so called. These 
mountain systems describe great curves, within which are 
relatively low hollows. In some cases these hollows are 
so deep that they are covered by water and form parts 
of the Mediterranean Sea, but in other cases they are 
above sea-level and have been filled in with soft deposits 
largely brought down by streams from the surrounding 
mountains, e.g. the plains of Lombardy, Hungary, and 
Rumania. 

The mountains of Northern Europe and the uplands 
of Central Europe described in previous sections are 
composed of hard rock in the form of blocks bounded 
by faults, but to a considerable extent these mountains 
of the south are different in their structure. The southern 
chains consist in large part of softer materials : limestones. 



CENTRAL EUROPE— SOUTHERN SECTION 97 

sandstones, and clays formed as layers of sediment in seas 
of bygone ages which existed where now the mountains 
are found. Rocks which were deposited as sediments 
in the water, and afterwards raised up by forces within 
the Earth's crust so that they come out of the sea and form 
solid ground, are known as sedimentary rocks. 

In the same period of the Earth's history when the 
more northerly blocks were cracked and dislocated, these 
southern regions were disturbed so that the sedimentary 
rocks, with other harder ones among them, were bent, 
ridged up, pressed together and even piled one upon 
another. The mountains formed in this way are called 
*' fold mountains," to distinguish them from the *' block 
mountains." 

These fold mountains are frequently of softer material 
than the block mountains, and so they are worn more 
quickly by the action of weather and streams, but on the 
other hand they were raised to much greater heights by 
the internal pressures which produced them. They have 
been slowly cut into by rivers, and now deep valleys 
separate high ridges and peaks which show to what 
altitudes the layers were raised. In course of time the 
valleys will become deeper and wider, and the ridges and 
peaks will be worn down ; but the mountains of Southern 
Europe were formed at a relatively late period of the Earth's 
wondrously long history, and still remain very high. 
Indeed, the Italian volcanoes and earthquakes show that 
the internal forces are still active, and the period of 
disturbance has continued in a mild form even to the 
present time. The great upheavals of the fold mountain 
systems of Southern Europe took place millions of years 
ago, long before the Ice Age, but many more millions of 
years must elapse before they are worn down and cease 
to be high mountains. 

As the materials of which they are formed frequently 

H 



98 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

differ from one another in the power of resisting the 
wearing of weather and streams, the mountains are cut 
up into many different forms, giving a great diversity to 
the landscape. Fold mountains are therefore not only 
higher but have a more interesting appearance, particularly 
in their higher parts, than the flat-topped block mountains. 
The greater height of the southern mountains as com- 
pared with the more northerly ones raises them into the 
very cold regions of the upper air where, in spite of the 
more southerly latitude, their highest parts are covered 
with perpetual ice and snow. From these masses of ice 
and snow, glaciers work down the valleys and add to the 
variety of the scenery, while vegetation changes from the 
cultivated plants of the lowest parts, to masses of dark 
pine forests at higher levels, and above that are the 
grassy lands, snow-covered in winter, but bright with 
many blossoms when the snow has melted. 

Fold mountains are therefore generally more beautiful 
than block mountains, but as a rule they lack the mineral 
resources of the latter and consequently the margins of 
the Southern Mountains have not the industrial character 
of the margins of the Central Uplands. The surrounding 
hollows filled with soft soil are fertile agricultural regions 
for the most part. The mountains are barriers, and roads 
are made through valleys and passes, so that trading towns 
grow up at the opening of the more important valleys 
into the lower lands on either side of the highland 
masses. 

On the whole, therefore, these high mountain regions 
may attract visitors by their beauty, but they offer a living 
to a relatively small number of people by agricultural or 
pastoral work, while the surrounding basins have agri- 
culture and trade, but little mining or manufacturing as 
compared with the block mountains further north. There 
are exceptions to this rule, particularly where minerals 



CENTRAL EUROPE— SOUTHERN SECTION 99 

are found, and these exceptions will be noted when the 
regions are described. 

The Alps and the Carpathians form the two great 
fold mountain systems of Central Europe, but to these 
must be added the Jura mountains, an offshoot of the 
Alpine system. They consist largely of parallel ridges 
of folded limestones, mainly pasture lands or bearing 
forests. They are separated from the Alps at their south- 
west end only by the narrow valley of the Rhone below 
Lake Geneva, but farther to the north-east there lies 
between the two mountain systems the western part of 
the Alpine Foreland, which forms the plateau portion of 
Switzerland. 

The Alps. — These are the highest and most massive 
of the fold mountains of Europe, with the exception of 
the Caucasus Range. In the valleys are situated the 
small towns and villages, and also the roads which connect 
the populated areas on either side of the mountain barriers. 
Hence it is more useful to know the chief valleys and the 
passes connecting them than the high peaks, and Fig. 5 
shows their situation. 

As the Alps make a great curve around the plain of 
northern Italy, the routes may be considered as going 
out from this plain as a centre. From Turin, where the 
Dora Riparia joins the River Po, a route goes westward 
up the Dora Riparia valley, and the railway which follows 
this route tunnels through the water-parting by the 
Mount Cenis tunnel into the valley of the Arc tributary 
of the Isere River, thence easily reaching the Rhone 
Valley. 

North of Turin the Dora Baltea offers another route 
as far as the town of Aosta, where it divides, a northern 
branch going by the Great St. Bernard pass to the Upper 
Rhone, and another going to the west by the Little 



100 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

St. Bernard Pass to the Isere ; these routes have carriage 
roads but not railways. 

From Milan several routes diverge. One railway 
goes along the west side of Lake Maggiore up the Toce 
Valley and by the Simplon Tunnel into the Upper Rhone 
Valley, whence another long tunnel is necessary to cross 
the Bernese Oberland to Bern, while an easier route 
follows the Rhone Valley westward to Geneva. Another 
railway goes along the east side of Lake Maggiore up the 
Ticino valley and by the St. Gotthard tunnel to the valley 
of the Reuss, which drains Lake Lucerne and leads to 
northern Switzerland and the Rhine Valley. A third 
route has no railway through it, although it is direct and 
has had great importance in the past ; it leads northward 
by the east shore of Lake Como across the Spliigen Pass 
to the Upper Rhine. 

The next important crossing goes from Verona up 
the Adige Valley past Trent ; at Bozen it follows the valley 
of the Isarco (or Eisack) tributary of the Adige, and from 
the head of this valley crosses by the Brenner Pass to the 
valley of the Inn at Innsbruck. From Innsbruck routes 
go westward up the Inn Valley and thence by the Arl- 
berg tunnel to the Rhine above Lake Constance, and 
eastward down the Inn Valley to Munich. 

The last Italian centre from which the Alps may be 
crossed is Trieste. A winding railway route leads across 
the southern Alpine ranges to the valley of the Drave ; 
here there is a low basin-like hollow in which the town of 
Klagenfurt is situated. From the Klagenfurt hollow a 
railway goes westward up the Drave valley, and past the 
headwaters of this stream it follows the Rienz, which 
flows westward along a continuation of the same valley 
into the Isarco. From Klagenfurt the same line is 
continued eastward down the Drave valley and so into the 
plain of Hungary. The line reaching the Klagenfurt 



CENTRAL EUROPE— SOUTHERN SECTION loi 




102 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

hollow from Trieste is continued northward across the 
mountains to the valley of the Mur, which it follows 
eastward to the town of Bruck. 

Although Bruck is a small town, it is an important 
route-centre. Here the river Mur turns sharply, and, 
followed by a railway, runs southward past Graz to join 
the Drave in the Hungarian plain. At Bruck, too, a 
small tributary of the Mur called the Miirz joins the 
larger river, and the railway from the Klagenfurt de- 
pression continues north-eastward up the Miirz Valley 
and across the Semmering Pass to Vienna. Finally, 
north-westward from Bruck a line goes past Eisenerz 
into the valley of the Enns and up this valley into that 
of the Salzach and thence to the Inn. 

The last- mentioned route is worth special notice, for 
it runs from end to end of Austria from Vienna on the 
east, across the Semmering Pass through the mountainous 
country by an almost continuous line of valleys to Switzer- 
land. 

The south-eastern part of the Alps merges into the 
north-western part of the Balkan Highlands sometimes 
called the Illyrian Alps. Two railways cross this region 
from the Adriatic port Fiume ; one goes northward, 
crossing the Save valley at Ljubljana (Laibach) and the 
Drave at Marburg, finally reaching Vienna via Graz and 
Bruck. The other route from Fiume goes at first east- 
ward crossing the Save at Zagreb (Agram), and then north- 
eastward across the Hungarian Plain to Budapest. In 
the days when Austria-Hungary was a great power 
Trieste and Fiume were its only ports. Trieste took most 
of the trade which came from Vienna and Austria to the 
Mediterranean, and Fiume took most of the trade from 
Budapest and Hungary. 

Of the towns mentioned in connection with these 
Alpine routes the large ones are outside the highland 



CENTRAL EUROPE— SOUTHERN SECTION 103 

area ; all those within the Alpine region are relatively 
small. Trade is not as important among the mountains 
as elsewhere, for most of the people live by growing their 
own food and by keeping cattle, and although they send 
away some of the produce, especially cheese and con- 
densed milk, the amount is not very great, and they do 
not import as much as most other European peoples, 
for they make for themselves much even of their clothing 
and house-furnishing. In other words, they are to a con- 
siderable degree self-supporting, and except for the visits 
of tourists are rather shut off from the outside world. 

Minerals are generally lacking, though in the Eastern 
Alps iron and lignite are found and give rise to some 
manufacturing in the valleys of the Drave, Mur, and Enns. 
More important will be the water-power which is now 
only just beginning to be used, particularly in the west 
in Switzerland, France, and Italy, where again some 
manufacturing is carried on. Most of the industries, 
however, are outside the Alpine region proper, and al- 
though Switzerland is commonly thought of as an Alpine 
country, by far the greater part of the Swiss people live 
in the Alpine Foreland between the Alps and the Jura 
Mountains. 

The Carpathian Highlands. — The north-eastern end 
of the Alps sinks lower toward Vienna and there 
disappears, so that across the Danube is a lowland where 
the Morava joins the great river ; this lowland is called 
the Vienna Basin. Tfie country drained by the Morava 
is called Moravia ; where it joins the Vienna basin it is 
bounded on the east by a narrow and low range called 
the Little Carpathians, and these rise higher towards 
the north-east until they finally bend round to the east 
and form the Beskides, part of the Carpathian highlands. 

The Beskides are a high range in the shape of a great 



104 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

bow, and within their curve are other heights ; im- 
mediately south of them is the wild and beautiful mountain 
group of the High Tatra, and within this another curve 
called the Low Tatra ; still further south are more 
mountains which used to be known as the Hungarian 
Ore Mountains, but this name has ceased to be applicable 
as all these highland masses are no longer in Hungary, 
but form a considerable part of Slovakia, now joined with 
the Bohemian and Moravian regions in the new state of 
Czecho- Slovakia. 

Of course, the important parts of this region are the 
valleys which separate the highlands. These valleys 
run mainly between the ridges in an east and west direc- 
tion, those of the west turning southward towards the 
Danube, those of the east turning southward towards 
the Tisza (Theiss). The southern boundary of the 
Slovakian highlands is formed by the broad valleys of 
the Eipel and the Sajo, where these rivers flow westward 
and eastward respectively. In all these Slovakian valleys 
the people cultivate the ground and keep their animals, 
and some iron-mining and manufacture are carried on, 
while the mountain slopes are forested and give an 
important supply of timber which is exported. 

The Beskides are continued eastward by a much 
narrower mountain area sometimes called the Forest 
Carpathians, because they are so thickly covered with 
trees, on the lower slopes largely with beech, on the 
high slopes with firs ; where these narrower mountains 
broaden southward into the Eastern Carpathians, the 
region is called the Bukovina, i.e. the Beech-land. 

The Eastern Carpathians join on to the Transylvanian 
Alps, a highland region more like a plateau in structure, 
with broad mountain pastures divided by deeply-cut 
river valleys. Within the great curve formed by the 
Eastern Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps lies the 



CENTRAL EUROPE— SOUTHERN SECTION 105 

upland basin of Transylvania, shut off from the Hungarian 
Plains by an irregular series of heights including the Bihar 
Mountains. Transylvania is therefore almost enclosed, 
and the peoples from the greater lowlands around have 
settled in it, so that its population is very mixed and it 
has been a " debatable land " recently taken from Hun- 
gary and given to Rumania. 

From the point of view of communications, Tran- 
sylvania is more naturally connected with Hungary, for the 
greater part of the upland basin is drained by the Szamos, 
Koros, and Maros rivers to the Tisza, and the valleys 
afford good routes, while only the south-eastern corner 
of Transylvania is drained to the lower Danube by the 
River Olt (Aluta), and the valley of this stream, where it 
breaks through the Transylvanian Alps, is very gorge- 
like and narrow. 

Transylvania is a country diversified by hills and 
valleys, productive in its forests, grainfields and pastures, 
and with mines of gold, salt, coal, and iron, which form 
the basis of some manufacturing. The western end of 
the Transylvanian Alps also has coal and iron ; this region 
forms the eastern half of the country known as the Banat, 
whose western half extends into the lowlands by the 
Danube. The mountainous Banat belongs to Rumania ; 
the lowland Banat belongs to Jugo-Slavia. 

There is no great space between the western end of 
the Transylvanian Alps and the Balkan Mountains ; the 
Danube breaks through the highland mass by a series 
of gorges extending for seventy miles, and at the " Iron 
Gates " the river forms rapids ; to allow navigation a 
canal has been constructed in one side of the river-bed 
at this point. 

The Hungarian Plains. — In the immense hollow 
surrounded by the Alpine, Carpathian, and Balkan 



io6 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Highlands there was formerly, before the time of man, a 
shallow inland sea into which the streams brought deposits 
from all around. These deposits tended to fill up the sea, 
and the Danube drained it by cutting the deep valley 
in the neighbourhood of the Iron Gates. So the sea 
disappeared and its bottom became a plain, but the 
drainage is not yet complete in so far as the lowest parts, 
especially those nearest the rivers, are very wet and 
marshy. The greater part of the region is a fertile plain, 
but there are some parts which are just the reverse of 
the marshy lowlands, for they are higher and very dry : 
even sandhills and dunes are often found. The climate 
of this enclosed plain is continental in type, that is, there 
is a cold winter and a hot summer, while the rainfall is 
much less than on the surrounding uplands. Conse- 
quently in summer much of the land becomes parched 
and dry, except where the rivers bring water from the 
mountains ; some districts are true deserts and the greater 
part of the country is treeless. 

The plain is divided into two portions by the line of 
heights which is cut by the Danube where that river 
turns sharply from east to south just above Budapest. 
On the south-west these heights are called the Bakony 
Forest ; on the north-east they include the Matra 
group. 

Above this division lies the upper plain ; it is extremely 
fertile, and through it the Danube wanders by several 
channels which enclose a number of islands. Although 
this region is commonly called the upper Hungarian 
plain, the northern part, together with the greater part 
of these islands, is now part of Slovakia. 

The lower Hungarian plain is much larger. Near 
the bordering uplands and on the west side of the 
Danube, the country is generally rather hilly ; but the 
country between the Danube and the Tisza, and east of 



CENTRAL EUROPE— SOUTHERN SECTION 107 

the Tisza consists of the great plains known as the 
" pusstas." These are unattractive in appearance, being 
naturally a steppe land, resembling the greater steppe 
lands of Eastern Europe. It used to be of value only for 
the rearing of animals, being specially famous for its 
horses, but it is now an important grain-growing region. 
The four great rivers of the Hungarian plain, the Danube, 
Tisza, Drave, and Save, are all navigable throughout the 
lowland area, and the Danube itself forms a natural 
means of communication between these plains and the 
regions lying above and below them. 

Only the north-western part of the lower plain now 
belongs to Hungary ; the eastern margin adjoining 
Transylvania is in Rumania, and the southern part is 
in Jugo-Slavia. 

The Rumanian Plains. — Between the Transylvanian 
Alps and the lower Danube is the plain of Wallachia, 
which descends gently to the swampy margin of the river. 
It is a fertile lowland and on the mountain borders are 
valuable petroleum wells. 

Where the Danube turns north it breaks into many 
channels, enclosing swamps and marshes, and then the 
river turns sharply to the east at Galatz to form its delta 
in the Black Sea. Where it makes this turn it is joined 
by the Sereth which skirts the Eastern Carpathians and 
the Pruth, also flowing south-eastward. The almost 
parallel tributaries of the Sereth and Pruth have cut 
broad valleys into the low plateau of Moldavia, which 
extends between the Eastern Carpathians and the Pruth. 
Very similar to the Moldavian plateau is that of Bessarabia 
between the Pruth and the Dniester. Both Moldavia 
and Bessarabia may be considered part of the great 
lowlands of Eastern Europe, but they belong to Rumania ; 
they are fertile grain-lands, and on the Moldavian margin 



io8 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

of the Carpathians there are oil-fields like those of 
Wallachia. 

South-west of the Danube delta, between the marshy 
northward reach of the river and the Black Sea, is the 
Dobruja, another low plateau, flat and with an exceptionally 
dry soil ; it is less productive than most of the lowlands 
of Central Europe and is therefore only scantily populated. 



SWITZERLAND 

Switzerland is a state founded and maintained upon 
the idea of Freedom. It originated over six hundred years 
ago, when the inhabitants of the Alpine valleys leading 
northward from the St. Gotthard mountain region joined 
together into a league in order to preserve themselves 
from other and much stronger states which had developed 
in the more populated lowlands. The central Alpine 
region was divided into a number of small districts called 
'* cantons," in each of which the inhabitants governed 
themselves in a very simple fashion and acknowledged 
no one as having any rights over them. At first three 
of these cantons united, and later others joined them, 
and in spite of the attacks of other countries, this con- 
federation maintained its independence and increased its 
extent until Switzerland now has a population of about 
four million people living in an area equal to that of 
Denmark. 

It has spread from the Alpine valleys across the Alpine 
Foreland between Lake Geneva and Lake Constance, 
and over a considerable part of the Jura Mountains. 
The original three cantons were inhabited by German- 
speaking people, and so are those of the centre and northern 
parts of Switzerland, but the people of the cantons ad- 
joining France speak French, and in the canton lying 



SWITZERLAND 109 

south of the St. Gotthard where the valleys lead down to 
the Italian plains, the people speak Italian. 

Nevertheless all these people are Swiss, and they are 
able to live together in one state because they have learnt 
that only by so doing can they avoid being made part of 
other and greater states. Moreover, they have under- 
stood that if they are to be really free they must not try 
to impose their will upon one another ; they leave one 
another free to speak different languages, and indeed to 
live very differently in many respects. 

Therefore, when Protestants a few centuries ago were 
persecuted by Roman Catholics, many of them found a 
refuge in Switzerland, so that now more than half the 
Swiss are Protestants, though in some parts of Switzer- 
land as well as in all the neighbouring states the majority 
of the people are Catholics. 

There is now one Swiss Republic formed of more than 
twenty cantons. The seat of the government is at Bern, 
in the centre of the country, and for matters concerning 
the state as a whole (such as defence, treaties with other 
countries, communications, and monetary affairs), the 
government at Bern makes and carries out the laws, yet 
the separate cantons retain the power of governing them- 
selves for local matters, and in these matters the central 
government has no power over them ; thus the Swiss 
cantons have much more freedom in government than 
English counties. Moreover, some of the smallest 
cantons have kept their ancient and simple system of 
having a great open-air assembly of all citizens to decide 
affairs, though in the larger ones representatives of the 
people must be elected to carry on the government. 

Moreover, the Swiss citizen retains his individual 
freedom to express his opinion upon the actions of the 
government by means of the arrangement known as the 
referendum. Any law passed by the government can 



no EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

be challenged by the citizens ; if 30,000 people sign a 
petition the law must be submitted to the direct vote of all 
the electors. In most cases in which the referendum has 
been employed, the people have rejected the proposed law. 

After the Napoleonic Wars, the great powers of Europe 
guaranteed that Switzerland should be neutral and that 
her territory should not be violated, and its freedom from 
warfare was maintained during the Great War. The 
Swiss have not spent so much wealth on armaments and 
fortifications as their neighbours, nor do they withdraw 
their young men from their work for several years in 
order to form a great army ; they regard this as one of 
the reasons why they have been able to develop their 
industries in spite of great natural disadvantages. 

It is very remarkable that Switzerland, possessing no 
coal, and practically no ores, having neither coast-line nor 
navigable rivers, and cut off to a large extent from other 
countries by mountain barriers, should have become a 
manufacturing nation, which imports raw material, sends 
away manufactured goods, and buys food from abroad 
for its industrial population. Yet such is the case, and 
although water-power is now being increasingly employed 
in the manufacturing, the industries arose without this help. 

When the cantons first united, there was a little silk- 
making carried on in the homes of the citizens of Zurich, 
and a little wool- weaving in Basel (Bale), but the first 
great development took place in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries when from Italy, the Netherlands, and 
France, Protestant refugees came and established them- 
selves and their industries in the Swiss towns, particularly 
in Zurich, Basel, and Geneva. They carried on the 
making of silk and woollen goods, and the French im- 
migrants brought the art of clock-making to Geneva. 

The clock and watch industry still continues at Geneva, 
but the chief centres are smaller towns in the Jura valleys 



SWITZERLAND 



III 



and on the Swiss side of the Jura mountains. The watch- 
making used to be carried on in the houses of the peasants 
of the Jura region, where it gave employment during the 
winter when field work was impossible ; but this domestic 
industry is now giving place to work in large modern 
factories equipped with machinery. Watch and clock- 
making well illustrates the character of the Swiss industries : 
it can be successfully pursued because it requires rela- 
tively little raw material, but much labour and great skill, 
while the export of the finished articles is not a difficult 
matter. One great factor is the admirable development of 
education in Switzerland, including both general education 
and also technical education for the special industries. 

The making of silk goods is centred in Zurich, and 
widely spread over the whole of the northern part of the 
country. The silk comes from the Mediterranean region, 
and the modern factories use coal brought up the Rhine. 
By the Rhine valley, too, comes the cotton for the cotton 
industry which has developed in the north-eastern part 
of the Alpine Foreland ; embroideries and lace are the 
products which best repay the skilled textile workers of 
Switzerland. 

A more recent development is that of the chemical 
industries, in which water-power is largely used ; cheap 
water-power and scientific research are the great advan- 
tages which Switzerland possesses for the manufacture 
of dyes and aluminium, in regard to which this country 
holds a high position. 

The use of water-power has led to the making of 
machinery suited to it ; and now hydraulic and electric 
appliances are not only manufactured for home use, but 
also exported. Zurich is important as a centre of the 
machinery industry as well as of silk manufacture ; it is 
the largest town of Switzerland and its Polytechnic (for 
industrial education) is famous. Next in importance are 



112 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the two " gate-towns " : Basel on the Rhine and Geneva 
on the Rhone. 

Only in one industry has Switzerland the advantage 
of obtaining the raw material at home, namely in the 
making of milk preparations, such as condensed milk 
and milk chocolate, though even in this case the sugar 
and cocoa have to be imported. 

Although it may be said that Switzerland is a manu- 
facturing country, this applies mainly to the northern 
portion — the Jura and the northern part of the Alpine 
Foreland, but in the southern part of the Foreland 
agriculture and pastoral work are more important, and 
in the Alpine region pastoral work is the main occupation. 
On the Foreland cereals (especially wheat) and potatoes 
are grown, and in suitable situations there are vineyards. 
The crops, however, are not sufficient for the needs of 
the country, and about three-quarters of the wheat supply 
has to be imported. 

In the Alpine region the relatively small population 
lives in villages near the streams in the lower parts of the 
valleys, and the people cultivate some fields near their 
houses, but their chief work is the tending of their cattle. 
In winter these are housed and fed with hay gathered 
and stored at the end of summer, but in spring they can 
be let out. Above the villages are the pastures known 
either as the " may en," i.e. the country used in May, or 
as the " voralp," i.e. the lower alp (alp=mountain 
pasture) ; these are occupied first, and in June the cattle 
are taken to the higher pastures, the real alps, which are 
then clear of snow. Usually, the greater part of the popu- 
lation remains in the village and only a few herdsmen 
and cheese-makers go to the alps, where they live in huts, 
and return with the cattle in the autumn. In some cases, 
however, all the population migrate, and live in houses 
built above the main village. 



AUSTRIA 113 

Goats are also kept on the high pastures, and pigs 
are reared, being given the whey left from the milk when 
the cheese is made. 

The simple life of these Swiss valleys is now being 
changed by the invasion of foreign tourists, of whom 
some millions visit Switzerland every summer. To 
accommodate them huge hotels have been built by the 
side of the small, wooden cottages of the peasants ; to 
take them up to the heights, railways have been con- 
structed not only along the valleys but even up the 
mountains ; to serve them, men and women migrate 
every year from the Foreland or the Jura regions. The 
tourists also frequent the lakes, especially Geneva, Lu- 
cerne, and Zurich, and their presence has increased the 
growth of the towns on the lake borders. 

Because Switzerland is in a central position it has 
often formed a convenient meeting-place when people 
from various countries have wished to meet to make 
common arrangements ; also the choice, for this purpose, 
of a small and relatively unimportant state avoids the 
jealousies which might be aroused if one of the larger 
ones had to be selected. For these reasons, Geneva was 
chosen as the seat of the League of Nations, and as there 
are officials always resident and business always being 
done, while every year the chief nations send representa- 
tives and other officials to the great Assembly of the 
League, Geneva has obtained a unique position as being 
in one sense the centre of the civilised world. 



AUSTRIA 

The Austrians are a branch of the German peoples, 
who had their home in the region lying on either side of 
the Danube between Bavaria and the Upper Hungarian 
plain ; this region is sometimes conveniently called 

I 



114 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Austria Proper. The Austrian rulers gradually acquired 
power over other lands, their territories being increased 
and diminished as their fortunes rose or fell. In some 
periods they were allied with the other German states, 
but in 1866 the Austrians and Prussians fought, and this 
alliance was broken. After the defeat of Austria by 
Prussia, the Hungarians or Magyars forced the Austrian 
government to give them " Home Rule," so that the 
Austrian Empire and the Hungarian Kingdom were 
governed separately for most purposes, although they had 
the same sovereign, and united for foreign affairs, that is, 
in their dealings with other countries. 

In the Austrian Empire were included the following 
areas (compare the map in Fig. 6 showing the boun- 
daries before the Great War with that in Fig. 8 showing 
the peoples) :~- 

(i) The north-eastern Alpine regions and the lower 
lands of Austria Proper, both of which are inhabited by 
the German-speaking Austrians ; 

(2) The Alpine region drained by the Adige, of which 
the part above Bozen is inhabited by Austrians, but 
the southern part around Trent, and hence known as the 
Trentino, is inhabited by Italians ; 

(3) Bohemia and Moravia, inhabited largely by 
Czechs ; 

(4) Galicia, the region lying north-east of the Car- 
pathians, inhabited largely by Poles and Ruthenians ; 

(5) The mountainous region behind Trieste, and the 
Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, inhabited in part by 
Italians but mainly by Jugo- Slavs. 

In the Hungarian Kingdom were included : 

(i) The Hungarian plains inhabited largely by 

Magyars ; 

(2) The Northern Carpathian region inhabited largely 

by Slovaks ; 



AUSTRIA 



115 




Emery Walker Ltd. sc. 

Fig. 6- — Boundary Changes in Central Europe. 



ii6 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

(3) The Transylvanian region inhabited largely by 
Rumanians ; 

(4) The region between Fiume and the Drave river, 
inhabited by Jugo- Slavs. 

Bosnia and Herzogovina were annexed in 1908 from 
Turkey by the " Dual Monarchy," that is, by the joint 
government of Austria-Hungary ; they are inhabited by 
Jugo- Slavs. 

In each part of the Dual Monarchy the government 
was in the hands of a small group of people ; the wealthy 
and powerful governing class among the Germans in 
Austria, and the corresponding class among the Magyars 
in Hungary. The subject-peoples of different nationality 
were in each case kept from power and quite frequently 
kept in a very lowly position. This was particularly the 
case in Hungary, where the Magyars tried to force the 
Magyar language upon the other peoples, so that almost 
the only schools allowed were for Magyar-speaking chil- 
dren. In this way the subject peoples were kept unedu- 
cated, and so they were badly handicapped in their efforts 
either to improve their conditions of living, or to be free 
of Magyar rule. 

Their opportunity came in the Great War. The 
men were forced as conscripts into the Austro-Hungarian 
armies, but they fought unwillingly and often deserted and 
turned their arms against their former masters ; for 
example, a large Czecho- Slovak force was re-formed in 
Russia to act against the Central Powers. When the 
Austro-Hungarian government at last gave up the struggle, 
the Dual Monarchy came to an end, and some of the 
subject peoples formed a new state, as in the case of 
Czecho- Slovakia, while others joined their kinsmen in 
neighbouring states, thus increasing these very con- 
siderably, as in the case of Jugo-Slavia which developed 
from Serbia, and of Rumania. 



AUSTRIA 117 

Only quite small regions were left to Austria and to 
Hungary ; indeed, even parts of these states inhabited 
mainly by Austrians or by Magyars were taken into the 
neighbouring countries, so that many Austrians are now 
incorporated, against their will, in Czecho- Slovakia and 
Italy, and many Magyars in Slovakia, Rumania, and Jugo- 
slavia. Yet the injustice, and the grievances and bitter- 
ness arising from this injustice :, are much less than they 
were before the change. The boundaries of the new 
states, even though they are not completely in accord 
with the principle of self-determination, do not violate 
this principle to anything like the extent which was 
previously the case. 

The most serious example of the new boundaries 
including Austrians in other countries occurs in Czecho- 
slovakia, where along the eastern, northern, and western 
borders of Bohemia the country is largely inhabited by 
German-speaking people, who have in past times settled 
in the Czech country (see map in Fig. 8). But Bohemia 
as a whole is Czech, and it would not have been possible 
to retain these border districts in Austria, for they are 
almost completely severed from Austria by the Czech 
lands. Moreover, in Bohemia itself the Czech districts 
and German-speaking districts are to some extent inter- 
mingled and have close connections in commercial life. 
Finally, the old historic boundaries of Bohemia coincided 
with the natural frontier formed by the surrounding 
highlands, and it seemed wise to keep the dividing lines 
which had proved effectual boundaries for many cen- 
turies. These considerations were held to outweigh 
the disadvantage of including the German-speaking 
peoples in a Slav state, so that there are now some 2| 
millions of them in Czecho- Slovakia. 

There is less to be said for the second case, that of the 
northern part of the Adige basin. Before the war, 



ii8 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Austria had held all the mountain region drained by the 
river, so that the boundary came right down to the 
Italian plains. This included the Italians of the Trentino 
in Austria, and also gave the Austrians a great advantage 
in regard to warfare, for there was no barrier of mountains 
between their territory and the plains of Italy. To get 
back the Trentino was one of the chief reasons which 
led Italy to enter the war, and when Austria collapsed, 
Italy not only obtained the Trentino but put the boun- 
dary much farther north along the water-parting between 
the streams flowing northward to the Inn and those 
flowing southward to the Adige. This gave Italy a very 
strong frontier from the military point of view, but it 
cut off about a quarter of a million Austrians from their 
mother country and reduced the western part of Austria, 
known as the Tirol, to a long and narrow strip. Italy 
has, therefore, gained a strong military position, but it 
has caused a perpetual feeling of injustice in its neighbour 
and introduced an alien and hostile element into its own 
population. 

The new Austria is only a fraction of the old state. 
Its area is about equal to that of Scotland and its popula- 
tion is between six and seven millions. Moreover, some 
of its greatest natural resources were in the lost regions, 
so that the new state must always be a relatively poor one 
while at present it is in absolute poverty. This is 
particularly true of Vienna, the capital. Before the war 
this was a city of over 2,000,000 people, the governing 
and business centre of a country which had four times the 
population of the present Austria. Indeed, it was in 
some way the commercial centre of all south-eastern 
Europe, for the banks and trading concerns of Hungary, 
Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and even Turkey had ofiices 
in Vienna, and sent their goods through this city to and 
from the northern and western regions of Europe. 



AUSTRIA 119 

Moreover, the mining and manufacturing industries of 
Bohemia were organised from Vienna, and in Vienna 
itself quite a good deal of miscellaneous manufacturing 
was carried on. 

This concentration of government, commerce and 
industry in Vienna was brought about by the rulers of 
Austria, and when the Empire was broken up most of the 
activities of Vienna were withdrawn to the various regions 
concerned, and so many thousands of officials j clerks, 
porters, and other workmen were unemployed. More- 
over, Vienna lived on foodstuffs brought from the 
country around and used coal from Czecho- Slovakia ; 
these supplies were cut off, partly because the people 
of Vienna could no longer pay for them, partly because 
they came from states scarcely friendly to Austria, and 
partly because of the general disorganisation due to 
the war. Thus the people of Vienna suffered greatly ; 
the sins of their past rulers were visited upon almost the 
whole population, and it was the poorer people and the 
children who were the greatest sufferers. Some relief 
was given by the governments and people of Britain, 
France, Italy, and America, but it could not cope with 
the distress. 

Vienna was not only a busy city ; its government 
and the wealthier people had made it a finely-built city, 
a centre of art and learning ; it rivalled Paris with its 
palaces and gardens, its famous library and University, 
its picture gallery and museums, and its theatres. To 
what extent these may survive will depend largely upon 
the permanent and natural advantages which the city 
still possesses, as distinct from the artificial position it 
formerly had. 

Vienna will be the capital of Austria, and therefore 
the centre of government and trade of a small state ; 
it is a port on one of the great rivers of Europe ; it is on 



120 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the great road and railway route by the Danube valley 
between north-western and south-eastern Europe, and 
it is at the junction of this route and that from the 
Adriatic (and therefore the Mediterranean region) 
through the " Moravian gate " between the Sudetes 
and the Carpathians. Yet these factors will not enable 
it to retain its earlier size, and a large number of its 
population had to seek a living elsewhere. 

In one way the situation of Vienna resembles that of 
Copenhagen ; each city developed in the most central 
position of its state, but when the greater part of the state 
broke away it was left upon the outskirts. Similar, also, 
in this respect is Budapest, now on the northern margin 
of the new Hungary. 

Like the greater German state, Austria is a Federal 
Republic, in which the Socialists have a great deal of 
power, but unlike its greater neighbour, it is mainly a 
pastoral and agricultural country. The people of its 
southern portion live in the Alpine valleys, in a way 
very like that of the people of southern Switzerland, 
but the eastern Alps have more mineral deposits than 
the western Alps, and mining and manufacturing have 
developed to some extent in the Austrian valleys. 

In the northern part of the mountains salt is found 
in several parts ; the name of Salzburg, the chief town of 
this region, means " Salt town." Much more important 
are the iron and lignite deposits of the eastern Alpine 
margins. At Eisenerz (which means Iron-ore), between 
the upper valleys of the Enns and the Mur, is an enormous 
mass of ore. Some of this is sent northwards to be 
smelted at Steyr in the lower Enns valley, for some lignite 
and coal is found both east and west of Steyr. More of 
the iron is sent southward down the Mur valley to Graz, 
for west of this town are fairly large deposits of lignite. 
Graz has some manufactures and is the second city of 



CZECHO-SLOVAKI A 1 2 1 

Austria. Iron is also found in the Klagenfurt Basin, 
where some manufactures of machinery, leather, and 
paper utilise the raw materials of the region. The 
industries of Austria are, however, small, its coal re- 
sources are very limited, and its water-power is as yet 
little used. 

Austria Proper is both agricultural, with grain-fields 
and vineyards, and pastoral ; it is the most densely 
populated part of Austria, and on the Danube near 
Bavaria is Linz, the third city of the state. 

Much of Austria is wooded, and timber is one of the 
few products which can be exported in any considerable 
quantities. Because of the variety in its products and the 
predominance of the food-producing occupations, the 
country is more self-supporting than most of its neigh- 
bours. 

CZECHO-SLOVAKIA 

The Republic of Czecho-Slovakia has a population 
of about 14 millions, and its area is about equal to that 
of England and Wales. 

It is composed of three portions : 

(i) The diamond-shaped " head " of the Czech lands, 
including Bohemia, drained northward by the Elbe and 
its tributaries, Moravia drained southward by the Morava, 
and a part of Silesia drained northward by the Oder. 

(2) The oval-shaped " body " of the Slovak lands, 
formed in the north mainly by the curved chains of the 
western Carpathian region and in the south by the valleys 
of the Danube and its tributaries. 

(3) The narrow *' tail " of Ruthenia, comprising the 
southern slopes of the Forest Carpathians and part of the 
upper Tisza valley. 

The " head " is the most productive and therefore 



123 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

most densely populated part of the state ; it has nearly 
ID million inhabitants, of whom three-quarters are Czechs 
and the remaining quarter Germans. The " body " is 
rather smaller in area, but has only about 3I million 
people ; of this population three-quarters are Slovaks 
and the remaining quarter are largely Magyars. The 
" tail " is much smaller, and in the valleys live less than 
half a million people ; here again three-quarters belong 
to the dominant race, in this case Ruthenians, and the 
remaining quarter are Magyars. 

The reasons why so many German-speaking people 
were included in the Czech lands were discussed in the 
section on Austria ; the inclusion of so many Magyars 
in the Slovak lands is based on rather different grounds. 
The Slovaks live mainly in the upper and middle parts 
of the valleys leading southward from the highlands, 
while the Magyars live with them in the south parts of 
these valleys, and also form the great mass of the popula- 
tion in the plains, near the Danube. If the boundary 
had been drawn from Bratislava (Pressburg) eastward, 
so as to leave the valleys of these tributaries on the north 
and the Danubian plains on the south, it would have been 
better adjusted to the difference in nationality, but it 
would have separated the northern valleys from one 
another, and so prevented the Slovaks from communicat- 
ing easily with one another without going into Hungary ; 
this was considered an impossible arrangement. More- 
over, if the Slovaks had been prevented from access to 
the Danube they would have lost their only good means 
of communication with other lands. This access would 
have been obtained if they had been given only the river 
port of Bratislava, but they succeeded in persuading the 
great powers of Europe which drew up the Peace treaty 
with Hungary to adopt as the frontier the southern 
course of the Danube where it "divides near Bratislava, 



CZECHO-SLOVAKIA 123 

so that they acquired a considerable part of the upper 
Hungarian plain. 

Similarly, in Ruthenia, the valleys leading southward 
from the crest of the Forest Carpathians to the upper 
Tisza valley are occupied by Ruthenians, but in a con- 
siderable part of the upper Tisza valley itself there is a 
majority of Magyars. Here, again, the main valley gives 
a route connecting the side valleys and has therefore been 
included in Ruthenia. 

It must be remembered that for centuries Czechs and 
Slovaks had been held in subjection by Austrians and 
Magyars, and the treatment they had received did not 
make them generous to their late masters when they 
obtained the upper hand. Force begets force, subjection 
leads to subjection, and it is very difficult to break the 
vicious circle. It is to be hoped, however, that a better 
time is beginning. The Czecho- Slovak state has promised 
by a signed treaty to respect the " racial, linguistic, or 
religious minorities " within its borders ; for example, 
schools are to use the language of the people of their 
district, so that the " minority population " will not have 
to choose (as was formerly the case) between being 
uneducated or speaking and writing a foreign tongue. 

The Czechs have lived in their region for over 1000 
years, and over 700 years ago there was an independent 
kingdom of Bohemia, which also included Moravia. 
Four hundred years ago they came under the Austrian 
crown, and gradually lost their independence. After an 
unsuccessful attempt at rebellion, much of their land 
was taken from them and given as large estates either 
to the Austrian Emperor or to the Austrian noblemen 
who helped to put down the rebellion. One of the first 
acts of the new government was to take over these estates 
to be the property of the Czecho- Slovak state, and to be 
worked as small farms ; as the great landowners had not 



124 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

thoroughly developed their property, this will be a gain 
from the point of view of agricultural production. 

During the centuries of subjection the Czechs retained 
their feeling of nationality, and preserved their language, 
even producing a considerable literature. 

The Slovaks, mainly living in more or less isolated 
valleys, never had an independent political state, but 
nevertheless fought against Magyar conquest and re- 
sented Magyar government. They have a language 
which is so similar to that of the Czechs that the two 
peoples easily understand one another. Education has 
been denied to them almost completely, so that they have 
practically no literature and practically no political 
training ; they do not, therefore, take such a large part 
in the government of the new state as the Czechs, but 
they have a fair number of representatives in the joint 
parliament. 

The Ruthenians are descended from people of Ukrain- 
ian stock who migrated across the Carpathians several 
centuries ago. They are content to form part of the 
Czecho- Slovak state, for they have been given local 
autonomy, that is, home rule for local affairs, and their 
territory is consequently known as Autonomous Ruthenia. 

The most fruitful parts of Bohemia are the valleys of 
the Labe (as the Czechs call the upper part of the Elbe) 
and its tributaries the Vltava (Moldau) and the Eger. 
In these valleys wheat and barley are grown, also sugar 
beet, hops, and fruit. On the plateau rye, oats, and pota- 
toes are grown, and Bohemia, as a whole, has a greater 
proportion of its land under the plough than any of the 
countries hitherto considered. Cattle also are kept in 
very large numbers. 

Moravia is lower and has an even larger area of 
cultivated land in proportion to its size. In its northern 
portion it has much the same agricultural and pastoral 



CZECHO-SLOVAKIA 125 

production as Bohemia, but in the warmer south, maize 
and the vine are found. The part of Silesia belonging 
to Czecho- Slovakia is similar in its agriculture to the ad- 
joining district of northern Moravia. 

In Slovakia the agricultural region is mainly the 
southern parts of the valleys and the Danube lowlands. 
These are very fertile, and because of their position, 
practically in the centre of Europe, produce all the grain 
crops of the continent, maize, wheat, and barley coming 
first and rye and oats being less important. Fruit, 
tobacco, and wine are obtained, but agriculture is not as 
productive as it will be when the peasants are better 
educated. 

The part of Ruthenia which is most productive is 
really the northern margin of the Hungarian plain, a 
warm region sheltered from the north and east by high 
mountains. Consequently the typical Hungarian pro- 
ducts, maize and wheat, easily come first ; also some 
wine of very high quality is produced. 

In all parts of Czecho- Slovakia forestry is important, 
and in Slovakia and Ruthenia a large part of the land is 
still covered with forests ; consequently timber is an 
important export. 

In respect of industries, Bohemia is highly developed. 
Lignite is found in the Eger valley, and coal near Praha 
(Prague) and Plzen (Pilsen). Iron is also found and there 
is therefore an iron and steel industry, which has its chief 
centres at and near Praha. The manufacture of beet 
sugar is very important ; it is carried on in the northern 
part of Bohemia (near the fuel supplies) and particularly 
at Praha. Sugar is made in such amount that it not only 
supplies home needs, but in addition is the chief export 
of the country. The making of beer is also mainly based 
upon the agricultural production (in this case hops and 
barley) and the supplies of fuel ; it is centred especially 



126 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

at Plzen, but " Pilsener " beer is brewed also at many 
other towns. Porcelain and glass are among the chief 
industries of Bohemia ; they are carried on particularly 
in the north-west, and notably in the Eger valley where 
kaolin or china clay as well as coal is obtained. 

Textiles, too, are manufactured ; cotton, woollen, and 
linen goods are all produced, the chief centres being near 
the Sudetes border in the north-east. These industries 
are carried on in factories, but there is a considerable 
amount of glove and lace making in the homes of the 
peasants, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Erz 
Gebirge and the Bohemian Forest Mountains. 

Moravia and Silesia have less industrial development. 
The chief coalfield of this region is near the Moravian 
Gate in the Teschen district on the borders of Czecho- 
slovakia and Poland. The only other coalfield supplying 
Moravia is west of Brno (Briinn), and as iron is obtained 
in the neighbourhood, machinery is made at Brno, 
particularly for the other industries of this town, namely, 
woollen manufacture and sugar refining. Brno is the 
chief town of Moravia and the second city of Czecho- 
slovakia. 

Slovakia is rich in minerals, for its mountains have 
deposits of iron, copper, zinc, antimony, and manganese, 
and there are large supplies of lignite and a little true 
coal. These minerals are mainly obtained in the 
" Hungarian " Ore Mountains, notably the western end, 
and also at the eastern end near the town of Kosice 
(Kassa or Kaschau), where some small manufactures 
are carried on. The mining and manufacturing industries 
of Slovakia are capable of considerably greater develop- 
ment ; iron and iron goods are the principal exports at 
present. 

Water-power is abundant in this mountainous country, 
but it, too, needs development. Capital from other lands 



CZECHOSLOVAKIA 127 

must be, and is being, introduced ; political conditions 
are better than they were when the land was under 
Magyar rule ; consequently the productivity of Slovakia 
is increasing and may become very considerable. 

Minerals can be obtained also in Ruthenia, but at 
present the only one worked to any extent is salt, which 
is exported in great amount, and there are no manufactures 
of any importance. 

There are three main routes by which trade with 
other countries is carried on : by the Elbe and its valley, 
by the Danube, and through the Moravian Gate. The 
Elbe is navigable from the North Sea into Bohemia as 
far as its junction with the Vltava, and the Vltava is 
navigable as far as Praha. Consequently Praha at the 
head of navigation has a considerable trade, and it is 
also the natural centre where routes from all parts of 
Bohemia meet. It has, therefore, become the capital 
of the state, and is by far the largest town, having nearly 
three-quarters of a million inhabitants. The valley of 
the Elbe is used also for railway traffic, and gives the 
main road into Germany and north-western Europe. 

Slovakia has the Danube as its great highway, and 
Bratislava is its chief river-port and largest city. From 
this point trade may go up the river (by boat or by railway) 
to north-western Europe or down the river to south- 
eastern Europe. 

Through the Moravian Gate goes less traffic, but the 
Oder is navigable from the Czecho-Slovakian boundary 
to the sea. 

A considerable difficulty exists in regard to internal 
communications. The long and narrow shape of the 
state as a whole causes Ruthenia to be far from the 
capital and the chief centres of population, and the moun- 
tains of Slovakia interpose great natural barriers between 
the two sides of the country. Moreover, the railways of the 



128 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Czech lands were constructed to lead to Vienna and those 
of Slovakia to lead to Budapest ; consequently there was 
no direct railway communication between these two 
regions when they were politically united, and railways 
were at once projected to remedy this lack. 

Yet in spite of its awkward shape and the unfavourable 
arrangement of the mountain barriers, the state is bound 
together by the common origin and the common interests 
of its people, and it commenced its independent existence 
under conditions that were more favourable than those of 
its neighbours after the Great War. It had escaped 
devastation during the war, it obtained at once a settled 
government (composed of representatives of several 
political parties and containing a large Socialist element) 
and it was assisted by French, British, and American 
capitalists who invested money in its commercial and 
industrial undertakings. 

The character of its government and political condi- 
tions was well illustrated by the fact that the first President 
of the Republic was Professor Masaryk, who had Slova- 
kian parents, was educated in Bohemia, was exiled by 
the Austrians because of his nationalist activities, became 
a professor in the University of London, and returned 
to unite the country and become the head of the govern- 
ment. 

HUNGARY 

By the loss of its northern territory to Czecho- 
slovakia, of the Transylvanian uplands and the adjoining 
eastern margin of the plain to Rumania, and of the 
southern part of the plain to Jugo-Slavia, Hungary has 
been reduced to a small state little larger than Austria 
in area, and with a population of between seven and eight 
millions. 



HUNGARY 129 

Moreover, in addition to the Magyars included in 
Slovakia, there are about one million among the Ru- 
manians of the Transylvanian basin ; also there are a very 
considerable number in the country between the Danube 
and the lower Tisza which now forms part of Jugo- 
slavia. In this southern part of the plain, the population 
is very mixed : the peoples are intermingled, and in 
addition to Magyars and Serbs there are colonies of Ger- 
mans. To draw any line clearly separating the nation- 
alities was quite impossible, but the balance of advantage 
was given to the Rumanians and Serbs, if it is an advan- 
tage for states to increase their territories by including 
alien peoples. 

Hungary is now composed of the southern part of the 
upper plain, the north-western part of the lower plain, 
and the rather low Bakony Forest and Matra Mountains 
separating them. As a very large proportion of its area 
is therefore lowland, and as the climatic conditions over 
this region are fairly uniform, the country has a marked 
simplicity in its economic life. Until the middle of the 
nineteenth century, it was mainly a pastoral land over 
which herds of horses, cattle and sheep wandered, but 
now most of the land has been taken into cultivation, so 
that Hungary has become predominantly an agricultural 
state, in which maize and wheat are the chief crops, rye, 
barley and oats being obtained to a less extent, while 
potatoes and tobacco are also grown. The vine is widely 
cultivated on the southern slopes of the mountain districts 
and around Lake Balaton ; Tokay near the northern 
boundary of the country is famous for its wine. Animals 
are still reared although the region is now mainly agri- 
cultural, and the country is noted for its breed of small 
and lightly-built horses. 

Practically all the mineral resources of the old Hungary 
are now in Czecho- Slovakia and Rumania ; a very little 

K 



130 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

coal is found in the Bakony Forest and Matra regions, 
and also in the uplands which rise from the plain near 
Pecs (Fiinfkirchen) in the south of the country. These 
supplies are not at all adequate for the needs of the 
country, and the flour milling which used to be carried 
on very largely at Budapest and elsewhere is seriously 
handicapped for want of coal. 

The rivers Danube and Tisza are both navigable 
throughout Hungarian territory, but only because of 
improvements in each case. The rivers flow through 
very flat country ; hence the many branches of the Danube 
and the extraordinary and complicated windings of the 
Tisza. Not only was navigation difficult, but the sur- 
rounding country was liable to flood ; dykes have been 
made to straighten the course of the streams and protect 
the adjoining lands. 

Budapest on the Danube is the capital and largest 
city. It used to have nearly a million inhabitants when 
it was the governing and commercial centre of the old 
Hungary, but like Vienna it must be of less importance 
in the future. The second largest town is Szeged (Szege- 
din) near the southern boundary, and close to the junction 
of the Maros and Tisza. Debreczen is at a meeting-place 
of routes across the north-eastern part of the plain, and 
consequently the chief trading centre of that region. 

Hungary, like Austria and Czecho- Slovakia, escaped 
direct injury during the Great War, but unlike these 
countries suffered invasion after the war. Producing 
foodstuffs to the extent it does, it should have been able 
to escape the famine that afflicted much of Central Europe, 
but there were great political upheavals, a succession of 
governments forced themselves on the country, and 
because of the establishment of one of these governments 
Rumanian forces invaded the country and entered Buda- 
pest. On their return to Rumania these forces took away 



RUMANIA 131 

everything they could — machines, raw materials, live 
stock, grain and flour. This, coming after the exhaustion 
of years of warfare and the effects of bad government, 
crippled the country, and the restoration of its production 
and trade will take years. 



RUMANIA 

The Rumanian people claim to be the descendants of 
the Roman colonists of Transylvania who later spread 
out over the plains of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bessarabia. 
Neighbouring powers overran and conquered various 
parts of the lands inhabited by Rumanians, and the 
present state was originated by the union of Wallachia 
and Moldavia in 1861. The Kingdom of Rumania now 
covers an area slightly larger than that of the British Isles, 
and the population numbers over 17 millions ; both the 
area and the population have been more than doubled 
as the result of the addition of territories at the close of 
the Great War. 

The greatest addition was that of Transylvania and 
the eastern Banat, transferred from Hungary. In this 
region there live about five million people, of whom rather 
less than half are Rumanians, so that a majority of this 
population form an alien element in their new state. 
But although this is so, there are more Rumanians (here 
generally called Vlachs) than people of any one other 
nationality in this region. The Magyars come next to 
the Rumanians in number ; both Magyars and Rumanians 
have been in Transylvania for many centuries, but the 
Magyars of Hungary very early took the country under 
their power. There are nearly one million Magyars, 
and they form the majority of the population of the 
eastern part of Transylvania, near the Carpathians. 



132 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

This part is, however, cut off from the Magyar country 
of the Hungarian plains by the western part of Transyl- 
vania where the Magyars are in a minority. 

With the Magyars may be grouped the half-million 
Szekels, who live mainly in the north-east of Transyl- 
vania. These are descended from an ancient people who 
were probably here before the Magyars ; they speak the 
Magyar language, but until the middle of the nineteenth 
century they had an independent government and they 
feel themselves to be of a distinct nationality. 

Peoples of German origin number nearly a quarter 
of a million in Transylvania and nearly half a million in 
the Banat. They are here called Saxons, and are de- 
scended from colonists who came from Flanders and the 
lower Rhine more than 700 years ago. They retain 
their language and regard themselves as a separate 
nation ; as they are better educated than the other 
peoples of south-eastern Europe and are hard working 
and thrifty, they are prosperous and form a very im- 
portant group of people. There are also a certain 
number of Jugo-Slavs and even some Slovaks, especially 
in the Banat. As the whole of this region is cut off 
from the old Rumania by mountain barriers, it will not 
be easily assimilated into the new state. 

The Bukovina which formed part of the Austrian 
Empire has less than one million inhabitants. The 
most numerous of its peoples are Ruthenians, but there 
is no strong state inhabited by Ruthenians which could 
absorb this territory. Next to them in number come the 
Rumanians, who, more active in political matters, had 
previously attempted a revolution, and took the oppor- 
tunity of the downfall of Austria to unite with Rumania. 

Bessarabia numbers over two million inhabitants. 
Its open plains have been invaded by peoples from all 
sides, and it has been joined in turn to Moldavia, to 



RUMANIA 133 

Russia, to Moldavia again, to Russia again, and now after 
the break-up of the Russian Empire it has been acquired 
by the united Rumanian state. Two- thirds of the people 
are Rumanians ; Ukrainians, Great Russians, and Jews 
make up most of the remaining part of the population. 

The Dobruja has been gradually acquired by Rumania ; 
the northern part has a population mainly Rumanian, but 
the southern part, which was taken from Bulgaria just 
before the Great War, has a large proportion of Turks 
and Bulgarians. 

By the acquisition of all these regions Rumania has 
not only added greatly to its agricultural resources, but 
also obtained, in Transylvania and the Banat, mineral 
wealth of which it previously had only a poor supply. 

Some gold, with less silver, copper, and lead, are 
obtained in the centre of Transylvania, near the sources 
of the Koros river, and salt is mined in the valleys of the 
Maros and Szamos. 

More important are the coal (mainly lignite) and iron 
in the north-western part of the Transylvanian Alps, and 
here iron works have been established. The mountainous 
eastern Banat which continues this district also has coal 
(of good quality) and large iron deposits, and here again 
there are iron and steel manufactures. For these works 
water-power as well as coal is used in the Banat, and copper 
also is mined and worked. At Brasso (Kronstadt), near 
the headwaters of the Olt, woollen goods are made, but 
the largest town of Transylvania is Kolozsvar (Klausen- 
burg) near the centre of the Basin. 

The remaining minerals of the country are found on 
the outer edge of the mountains bordering the Wallachian 
and Moldavian plains. A little coal of poor quality is 
obtained, but the great resources are of petroleum and 
salt. The oil is especially important ; the wells are 
situated along the foothills of the mountains, both between 



134 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the east part of the Transylvanian Alps and the Wallachian 
plain and also between the southern part of the Carpathians 
and the Moldavian plain. The oil is conveyed in pipes 
from the wells to certain towns where refineries are 
situated ; the largest of these towns is Ploesti (Ploesci), 
north of Bucharest. 

The forests give a source of wealth which has been 
greatly increased by the addition of the well-wooded 
Transylvanian and Banat regions. Beech and coniferous 
trees (pines and firs) are the most plentiful, but the oak 
though less common has the more valuable timber. 

Agriculture, however, is still the greatest resource of 
the country. Maize and wheat are the chief crops, 
maize predominating somewhat in all regions. The 
factor determining which of the two crops is grown is 
the ownership of the land, rather than the soil or the 
climate. Maize is used largely for home use, as food for 
people, animals or poultry ; it is grown by the small 
landowners and the peasants who have a field or two, 
a garden and a few live stock. Wheat is in the main 
an export crop ; it is therefore sown by the large land- 
owners whose estates produce far more than they need, 
and who obtain their money from the sale of the grain. 
Moreover, wheat requires more labour than maize and 
the peasants have usually no time to spare. In the hill 
country the peasants commonly own their own land, and 
each farm is almost an economic unit, that is, it produces 
practically everything it requires. In the plains the land 
is largely in the possession of the richer men who have 
large estates, and here the peasants spend most of their 
time working at a low wage for these landowners even 
though some of them also work on small farms of their 
own. In Bessarabia much of the land belonging to the 
peasants is held not by individuals but in common ; this 
is a Russian system which was introduced when the 



RUMANIA 135 

country belonged to Russia, and it will be described in 
the section dealing with that country. 

Of the other cereal crops, barley and oats are grown 
to a less extent than maize and wheat. In suitable regions 
such products as the vine, fruit, and tobacco are obtained, 
and the mulberry is grown for the rearing of silkworms. 
Animals of all kinds are kept throughout the country. 

The agricultural production is in ordinary times more 
than sufficient for home needs and there is an export, 
particularly of wheat and maize ; peas and millet are also 
grown for export and eggs are sent abroad. These 
commodities, together with the petroleum and some 
timber, pay for the manufactured goods which have to 
be imported. 

As regards trade and communication generally, the 
Transylvanian and Banat region is less favourably situated 
than the rest of the country, from which it is almost 
completely separated by the mountain barriers. Only 
three railway lines cross the Transylvanian Alps, and 
none crosses the southern Carpathians. As the Transyl- 
vanian region is so cut off from the rest, has such a different 
population, and possesses such a variety of resources that 
it could be almost completely self-supporting, it is likely 
to remain to a large extent a separate region from the 
economic point of view, even though it is joined politically 
to the larger Rumanian country. 

Possessing the lower course and mouth of the Danube 
as well as a considerable frontage on the Black Sea, 
Rumania is rather more favourably situated for trade 
than Austria, Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia. 

The channels of the lower Danube do not naturally 
favour navigation, because of the constant formation of 
shoals, but the central channel of the delta, which has 
Sulina at its mouth, has been straightened and is continu- 
ally dredged so that ocean-going vessels can proceed fully 



136 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

laden as far as Galatz and Braila. Navigation is still, 
however, prevented at certain times in the winter and 
spring, first by ice forming and blocking the channel, and 
afterwards by the floods which follow the thaw. On the 
average the river mouths cannot be used for about forty 
days a year, and " winter harbours " have been con- 
structed where ships can lie up in safety when the river is 
not navigable. Galatz and Braila are two of the three 
great ports of the country, and it must be remembered 
that they handle goods going to and from the other states 
along the course of the Danube. This lowest part of 
the river has for many years been managed by an inter- 
national Commission consisting of representatives of the 
chief commercial states of Europe. The third port is 
Constantsa (Kustenje) south of the delta, and therefore 
not subject to the blocking of its harbour by river silt 
or by ice, for the sea- water, salt and relatively warm, 
does not freeze nearly as quickly as that from the cold 
interior. In such regions as the Black Sea and the Baltic 
Sea, the ports away from the river mouths are frequently 
open when the river ports are frozen. 

Constantsa deals with much of the traffic which passes 
through Rumania by rail, for it is connected directly 
with the main railways on the other side of the Danube 
by the only bridge which crosses the lower river, namely 
at Cernavoda. 

Bucharest is nearly in the centre of the Wallachian 
plain, and at the crossing place of the chief routes. It 
is the seat of the government, and has a population of 
about 350,000 people, and therefore is an unusually small 
capital city for so large a state But just as Vienna and 
Budapest must decline, so Praha and Bucharest must 
grow, the inevitable results of the great transference of 
territory in the states of which they are the capitals. 



WESTERN EUROPE 137 



WESTERN EUROPE 

Western Europe may be taken to include the Iberian 
Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), but it is convenient to 
deal with the three southern peninsulas of Europe to- 
gether under the name of Mediterranean Europe ; hence 
the only countries included here under the heading of 
Western Europe are Belgium and France. No hard and 
fast line can be drawn in making such divisions as Central 
and Western Europe ; indeed, both Belgium and France 
extend into the regions described in the section on 
Central Europe. 

The North-Eastern Regions. — The map in Figure 7 
shows the natural divisions of France, i.e. regions each of 
which has a number of characteristics which distinguish 
it from adjoining regions. Those of north-eastern 
France may be named according to rivers draining them : 
the Rhine Rift Valley, the Rhine Uplands, and the 
Schelde Lowlands. The first two have been described 
in the section upon the western uplands of Central 
Europe. The south-western portion of the fertile Rhine 
Rift Valley is French. Of the Rhine Uplands, the Vosges 
Mountains and the country of moderate elevation lying 
west of them in the upper Moselle valley are also French, 
while the Ardenne Uplands are Belgian, and a small 
district between the south-east of the Ardennes and the 
Mosel forms the independent state of Luxembourg. 
The lowlands between the Ardennes and the North Sea, 
drained by the Schelde and its tributaries, are Belgian 
for the most part but French in the extreme west. 

All these regions have valuable resources and are the 
homes of large groups of people. Alsace includes both 



138 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the wooded edge of the Vosges and the uplands just north 
of it looking down upon the Rhine Valley, and also the 
greater part of the fertile valley lying west of the Rhine 
where manufactures and trade support large cities such as 
Strasbourg, Mulhouse, and Colmar. In Lorraine is the 
middle valley of the Moselle with its great deposits of 
iron ore, and iron and steel works depending upon this 
mineral wealth. In the Saar Basin is the coalfield, 
whose ownership has been explained in the section on 
Germany. On the northern edge of the Ardennes is 
the Belgian coalfield giving rise to manufactures both 
along the line formed by the Sambre River and the Meuse 
between Namur and Liege, and also in the towns of 
the plains to the north ; these plains have in addition 
a very considerable agricultural and trading population. 
The north-east corner of France has a relatively small 
portion of the coalfield extending into it, but it is 
sufficient to give rise to important manufacturing 
industries. 

The Paris Basin. — This, the largest of the natural 
divisions of France, is well named the Paris Basin, for 
it is lowland with Paris as its central point almost sur- 
rounded by higher country. Even the region between 
Paris and the English Channel is rather higher than that 
just around the city, and the Seine cuts through it by a 
steep-sided valley. The ring of higher country is least 
marked in the south-west where the Gate of Poitou 
(marked A on the map in Fig. 7) leads into the Garonne 
Basin. 

Most of the northern part of the Paris-Basin is drained 
by the Seine, but the tributaries of this river are nearly 
all on its right side, and much of the region on its left side 
drains to the Loire ; hence the south-western part of the 
Paris Basin is connected with the Loire rather than with 



WESTERN EUROPE 



139 



the Seine, and its outlet would seem to be to the Atlantic 
Ocean rather than to the English Channel. Nevertheless 
Paris^is the centre of the life of nearly all the Paris Basin, 




Emery V7alker Utd. sc. 



Restored region of Alsace-Lorraine is clotted 
CHSEE9 Coalfields • .- „ Boundaries of Natural Regions 
"m .,,,,, '„,„o- Scarp slopes of chalk and limestone within the Paris Basin 
Political boundary of France 

Fig. 7. — Divisions and Coalfields of France. 

for roads and railroads radiate from it to all parts ; even 
water communication centres upon Paris, for the Seine 
is connected by canal with the Loire at Orleans, while 
the Loire itself is not much used for navigation. This is 



140 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

because the amount of water varies very greatly ; some- 
times it has not enough water to carry boats, and at others 
it is flooded by rain-water which pours rapidly down 
from the high Central Plateau in which its chief 
tributaries rise. The flatter country of the Seine basin 
gives a steadier flow to that river, and the structure of 
the rocks also causes a difference in the '* run-off " of 
rain-water to the two streams. 

The Central Plateau is largely of hard rock into which 
water cannot sink, so that it runs away immediately and 
causes floods. Much of the Paris Basin, on the contrary, 
is formed of chalk and limestone into which the rain 
water disappears, creeping slowly along underground 
till it comes out at lower levels in springs or is pumped 
up in wells. The springs feed streams which flow to 
the Seine, so that this river gets its supply slowly and 
not in sudden floods, much to the advantage of navigation. 

The Paris Basin is composed of a number of layers of 
sedimentary rocks of different materials ; at the bottom 
is a thick sheet of limestone, above that a softer deposit 
of clay, then comes a sheet of chalk, above that again a 
clayey layer, and finally at the top a mass of material of 
a limey character. These layers are bent down towards 
the centre in the neighbourhood of Paris, rising towards 
the sides of the Basin ; hence they are in shape like a 
series of saucers, lying one on another, the smallest 
appearing at the centre, surrounded by the rims of the 
larger ones. 

The lowest and largest of the saucer-shaped layers, 
that of limestone, comes up to the surface in a broad 
band around most of the edge of the Paris Basin, particu- 
larly marked in the south-east, where it forms the high 
plateau of Langres which joins the north-eastern end of 
the Central Plateau to the south-western part of the Rhine 
Uplands. This thick layer of limestone is mainly upland, 



WESTERN EUROPE 141 

with a steep edge, or " scarp slope," looking south-east 
over the valley of the Saone River, and a more gentle 
" dip slope " to the north-west where it dips down under 
the next laj^er, which is formed largely of clay. This 
clay layer has been worn down to lower country, which 
forms a narrow belt between the limestone upland and 
the next layer. 

This, also saucer-shaped and lying on top of those 
mentioned, but smaller in extent, shows itself in a ring 
nearer to Paris. It is chalk, and in many ways is like 
the limestone, for it forms a rather dry upland, whose 
scarp slope (see the marking close to the letters Ch. on 
Fig. 7) looks outward over the clay plain while its dip 
slope leads down towards the centre of the Basin. The 
tributaries of the Seine run through gaps in the steep 
scarp, and towns are frequently situated at these gaps 
because of the trade passing through them. 

The chalk dips inward to another low clayey ring, and 
this, in its turn, has above it the last of the saucer- shaped 
formations, that which forms the ground around Paris. 
It is largely a limey deposit, and like the outer limestone 
and the chalk it is plateau-like in shape, with its scarp 
slope looking outwards (shown by the marking close to 
the letter L on Fig. 7), and a gently sloping hollow in 
its centre where Paris is situated. Through its scarp 
slope, too, the rivers flow in gaps marked by towns, for 
example Reims (Rheims) and Epernay. 

This alternation of layers gives varied country to the 
Paris Basin ; on the whole the low clayey belts are rather 
damp, with many trees, fertile meadows and large numbers 
of cattle, while the uplands are drier, appear more bare, 
but nevertheless have extensive fields of grain and other 
crops. The " rims " of the saucer-shaped chalk and 
limestone layers only stand up as marked and high scarps 
in the south-east ; elsewhere there is not such a difference 



142 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

of height even though the belts of country differ in appear- 
ance and productions. The scarps of limestone and chalk 
face to the south-east, and so get much heat from the sun ; 
they are largely used for vineyards and the chalk edge is 
the " Champagne '* region, from which the famous wine 
gets its name. 

North of Paris much of the country is formed of a low 
plateau of chalk with a cliff-edged coast, with few harbours. 
Hence there is little fishing here ; even the coastal people 
grow crops or keep animals. 

The North-Western Block. — The peninsula of Brit- 
tany is very different from the Paris Basin. It is not 
high, but it is rugged country, both along the coast and 
also inland. It is formed from a block of older, harder 
rock which is highest on the west, and dips gently east- 
ward sinking beneath the softer layers of the Paris Basin. 
The region has been cut up by weather and streams, so 
that the less resistant rocks have been worn into valleys, 
while the more resistant ones stand up as ridges. In the 
projecting western extremity of the region, great masses 
of granite form bulging uplands which run from west 
to east behind its northern and southern shores. Between 
these uplands is a valley area, and as the whole region has 
sunk down somewhat, the sea has penetrated this lower 
land and flooded part of it, forming the great bays, on the 
north of which the port of Brest has grown up. All 
round the region the seaward ends of the valleys have 
been drowned so that the land is cut up by inlets giving 
useful harbours along a coast noted for its steep slopes 
and cliffs. Much fishing is done here, and the fishing 
villages send men even as far as Arctic waters and the 
great Newfoundland Banks across the Atlantic Ocean. 
Much of the country itself is of little value ; the hard 
rocks and the wetness of the climate prevent many crops 



WESTERN EUROPE 143 

being obtained. This is particularly true of the pro- 
jecting western portion, where in addition to the fishing 
the chief occupations are sheep and cattle rearing and 
the growing of vegetables, which here ripen early, and 
so get a high price in Paris before the market receives 
those from other regions. The eastern part has had its 
soils improved by mixing with lime brought from the 
Paris Basin, and here beside raising cattle, people grow 
crops and fruit, particularly apples and pears from which 
cider and perry are made. 

The old province of Normandy included the north- 
eastern part of this block (the peninsula of Cotentin), 
and the adjoining part of the Paris Basin as far as the 
country around the lower course of the Seine. This 
was the home of the Normans, and in the great gulf of 
the north, between the peninsula of Brittany and the 
Cotentin peninsula, are the '* Norman Islands,'' Jersey, 
Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark, which in government 
have been joined to Britain since the Norman Duke who 
owned them became King of England. The Cornish 
peninsula, the Norman Islands, and the Breton peninsula 
are very alike in structure, climate, and appearance, and 
in the occupations of the people. 

The Central Plateau. — This is another great mass 
of ancient hard rock, and it has been uplifted so as to 
form a plateau rising gradually from the plains adjoining 
it on the north-west until it reaches a height of 5000 feet 
in the south-east. Here its edge forms a great curve of 
highland rising steeply from the Rhone valley ; this edge, 
mountain-like as seen from below, and cut up by many 
short river- valleys, is called the Cevennes. 

The northern border is broken by two deep valleys, 
through which flow the upper Loire and its tributary the 
Allier. These are like deep inlets from the Paris Basin, 



144 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

their floors covered with softer and fertile deposits which 
make them valuable agricultural districts in strong 
contrast with the highlands overlooking them. 

It might be expected that the least useful and least 
populated part of the Central Plateau would be the highest, 
that is, the south-east part, but there are differences in 
the nature of the rock of which it is composed which are 
as important as the elevation. The north-west and lowest 
part is largely made of granite ; this is a rather barren 
plateau, with very little agriculture, but giving pasture 
to horses, cattle and sheep, and the lower parts are 
planted with chestnut trees giving nuts used by the people 
as food. In the middle of the plateau, overlooking the 
upper valley of the Allier, volcanic action has occurred, 
and old volcanic cones form mountains towering even 
higher than the Cevennes. But around these are lower 
masses of old lava which has weathered into a fertile soil, 
so that crops are grown at elevations of over 3000 feet. 

In the south-west the plateau is formed of a hard 
limestone, so permeable that rain-water sinks in quickly 
and the surface is very dry. Vegetation can scarcely 
exist and the region is almost a desert. The water collects 
underground into streams which are in part hidden, but 
frequently come out in narrow, steep-sided and deep 
gorges. These gorges cut up the plateau into sections 
which are almost isolated from one another, for it is 
extremely difficult to cross the valleys. To go up the 
gorges is equally difficult ; they are often so narrow that 
no passage is left between the stream and the precipitous 
sides. 

In this country, the dry, bare, deeply-cut limestone 
districts are known as the " Gausses." They are found 
in other countries where there are very permeable lime- 
stone uplands, and go by various names. One such 
plateau is behind Trieste ; it is called the Carso by the 



WESTERN EUROPE 145 

Italians, and the German-speaking peoples called it the 
Karst ; hence geographers describe other similar regions 
as " Karst-like," and the Gausses of France give a good 
idea of the Karst characteristics. 

The Gentral Plateau of France, like some of the corre- 
sponding blocks of Gentral Europe, has coal deposits on 
its borders. The most important of these are on the east 
(see Figure 7). In the north-eastern part are the coal- 
fields near Le Greusot ; further south, overlooking the 
Rhone valley near Lyons, is a longer but narrow coalfield 
on which an almost continuous row of towns has grown 
up, the largest being St. Etienne. StilL further south is 
the small coalfield of Alais. As is usually the case, 
these coal deposits have given opportunity for the develop- 
ment of a relatively dense population. 

The Garonne Basin. — Between the Gentral Plateau 
and the Pyrenees lies the wedge-shaped Garonne Basin. 
The southern part of the basin is drained by the river 
Garonne, but the northern part is largely drained by the 
Dordogne, and the waters of the two streams unite in 
the long estuary known as the Gironde. 

To a considerable extent the Garonne Basin is formed 
of layers like those of the Paris Basin, and is on the whole 
fertile. Indeed, its cHmate is warmer, and it therefore has 
an advantage over the more northerly region and produces 
maize as well as wheat, while fruit is abundant, especially 
plums, peaches, and apricots, and vines grow over all the 
lowland parts, the Bordeaux region being specially 
famous. 

The coast of the region is remarkable. A line of high 
sand dunes has prevented the outward drainage of water, 
and so a series of lakes has been formed parallel with the 
coast. Behind the lakes is a wide expanse of flat country 
known as the Landes. This used to be one of the poorest 

L 



146 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

districts of France, for the sand blew inward, the dunes 
slowly advancing and overwhelming fields and even 
settlements. Moreover, below the surface a hard layer 
in the sub-soil prevented rain-water draining downward 
and the ground was damp, often marshy and very un- 
healthy, the few shepherds having to get about on stilts. 
Nov/ great improvements have been made. The hard 
layer has been broken up so that the country is properly 
drained, while forests of pine trees have been planted 
behind the coast to stop the drift of the sand. From the 
pines, resin and tar are obtained, and the whole region is 
now much more productive and consequently better 
populated. 

In the south of the Garonne Basin the country rises 
gradually to the line of the Pyrenees, and, in the central 
part of the line, where streams radiate outwards like the 
ribs of a fan, the upland reminds one of the Bavarian 
plateau, for it is covered with infertile gravels deposited 
from the glaciers which covered the Pyrenees in the Ice 
Age. 

The upper Garonne is one of these radiating streams ; 
it flows at first to the north-east and turns sharply to the 
north-west at Toulouse ; this city lies at the south-eastern 
corner of the basin, and from it canal, road, and railway 
routes lead over the watershed to the Mediterranean 
region by the narrow Gate of Carcassonne (marked C on 
Fig. 7) between the Central Plateau and the Pyrenees. 
Most of the coast of the Garonne Basin is useless for 
navigation, so that the Atlantic trade is limited to the 
Gironde estuary, at whose head is the great town and 
port of Bordeaux. 

The Pyrenees. — The Pyrenees are more like a wall 
than are many mountain regions, for they separate France 
from Spain so effectively that no railway crosses them ; 



WESTERN EUROPE 147 

only around their eastern and western extremities have 
engineers completed railway communication between the 
two countries, though roads and railway lines have been 
constructed up a number of the valleys on the French 
side. These valleys end in very steep slopes ; conse- 
quently even roads across the crest are few and very 
poor, and practically no trade can surmount this great 
barrier. In the French valleys some cultivation is carried 
on, pasturage and forests give a little value to the lower 
and gentler mountain slopes, but the region as a whole 
is of less value to the French than is the Alpine region. 
It does, however, form a natural defence, and has become 
a boundary between the two countries ; until warfare 
between nations is abolished the possession of such natural 
boundaries must be regarded as an advantage, and the 
Garonne Basin has not suffered the repeated ravages of 
warfare which the more open regions of north-eastern 
France have experienced. 

The Jura and Alpine Mountains. — These regions 
have been dealt with in preceding sections, and it is 
necessary here only to point out that France includes 
a large part of the south-western Alps. The boundary 
between France and Italy follows the watershed between 
the Rhone and the Po river-systems, and therefore the 
crests of some of the mountains ; the great mass of Mont 
Blanc, the highest part of the Alps, towering more than 
15,000 feet above sea-level, is close to the most northerly 
part of this boundary. The Isere and Durance, tributaries 
of the Rhone, drain valleys in which quite a number of 
people get a living, and Grenoble in the Isere valley is a 
centre not only of local trade, but even of manufacturing 
which employs many thousands of people in tanning atid 
making gloves and other articles from the skins of the 
animals reared in the region ; water-power is being 



148 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

increasingly used as a means of manufacturing in the 
Alpine valleys. 

Between the high Alps and the Mediterranean Sea 
is a narrow strip of hilly coast-land known as the Riviera. 
With mountains behind, a coast diversified by small bays 
and promontories, and the blue Mediterranean waters 
in front, this region is one of the most beautiful in 
Europe ; its position, sheltered from the north by the 
Alps, gives it a warm and sunny climate, and these 
attractions draw to it people from all parts of Europe 
seeking health or pleasure. Nice, Monaco, and Mentone 
are three of its famous pleasure resorts. 

The Bhone-Saone Lowlands. — The most striking 
feature of this region is its great length from north to 
south. Because of this it includes markedly different 
kinds of country and also forms an important line of 
communication. In a preceding paragraph it has been 
pointed out how the Gate of Carcassonne joins this low- 
land to the Garonne Basin ; in a similar way the Gate 
of Belfort (marked B in Figure 7) joins it to the Rhine 
Valley and Germany, while the valley of the middle 
Rhone between the Jura and the Alps gives a route 
from its central portion into Switzerland. These side 
gates are, however, not so important for trade and 
travellers as the southern opening to the Mediterranean 
and the less marked routes over the Plateau of Langres 
to the Paris Basin on the north. The most used traffic 
route of all France is from Paris across the limestone 
plateau at Dijon into the Saone valley and thence past 
Lyons to Marseilles, the greatest port of France, at the 
south-eastern extremity of the Rhone Valley. 

* Looked at on the map of Europe, the Rhone-Saone 
valley is seen to give the easiest land route between the 
Mediterranean Lands and North-western Europe, for it 



WESTERN EUROPE 149 

avoids the barrier of the Alps and leads on the north-east 
to Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, and on the north- 
west to North France, Belgium, and Britain. 

Apart from its value as a line of communication this 
lowland is very productive. From the slopes bounding 
its northern end to the region at the south known as the 
Midi, it is characterized by its vineyards ; the Midi 
region produces more wine than any other part of France. 
In the Saone portion there are broad plains where wheat 
and maize are grown, and cattle and poultry are reared. 
In the more southerly Rhone portion, the valley is 
narrower, and the climate and vegetation are different ; 
here the Mediterranean region really begins and the 
country takes on a different aspect which will be described 
in a later section. 

The extreme south is formed by the delta of the 
Rhone ; the area, known as the Camargue, between the 
two chief arms of the river, is naturally a low, wet, un- 
healthy district, and even now that dyking and draining 
have been carried out it has few inhabitants. To the 
east of this is the Crau, formed of masses of gravels 
largely brought down by the Durance. In one respect 
the Crau is the exact opposite of the Camargue, for the 
ground is so dry that it is called the '* French Sahara," 
and the only habitable parts are where irrigation canals 
from the Durance have brought mud and water and made 
possible cultivation and pastoral work. 

The currents of the Mediterranean sea sweep round 
the shores in a " counter-clockwise " direction, so that 
in this region they go from east to west and take the 
alluvium from the Rhone system westward. The ports 
on the west side of the Lion Gulf are therefore obstructed ; 
the harbour of Cette has had to be made artificially, and 
is kept open with difficulty. The eastern side of the Gulf 
is relatively clear, and Marseilles (spelled by the French : 



150 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Marseille) being well away from the mouths of the Rhone 
(with which it is connected by a canal) has been a com- 
mercial centre for two thousand years. 

Besides agriculture and commerce, manufacture is a 
resource of the great valley ; Marseilles has very con- 
siderable industries, and Lyons (spelled by the French : 
Lyon) is the centre of one of the chief manufacturing 
regions of France. 

The Climates of France. — The temperature diagrams 
in Figure 3 show that in summer the heat at Brest is 
scarcely as great as that in Central or Eastern Europe, 
but the winter is very mild. As the temperature curve 
does not sink below the level of 42° Fah., there is no month 
when it is too cold for some growth of vegetation, though 
this growth is very little in the winter, for the temperature 
is only just above the amount required. But early in 
spring growth becomes more vigorous, and sufficient 
heat for the vegetables and fruits to mature is received 
much earlier than in the more easterly regions. This 
explains the export of these products from Brittany to the 
Paris region. 

The temperature curve for Marseilles shows a winter 
as mild as that for Brest, with a summer very much hotter. 
The curve for Marseilles should be compared with that 
of London, placed next to it, in order to realise the much 
greater heat of summer. The temperature at Paris in 
summer is about equal to that of Brest or of London ; 
in winter Paris is considerably colder than Brest or 
Marseilles, and slightly colder than London, for the 
average temperature is about 36° at mid- winter. 

The rainfall graphs in Figure 4 show equally marked 
differences between the north-west and south-east of 
France. At Brest there is an abundance of rain, particu- 
larly in the autumn and winter, while at Marseilles there 



WESTERN EUROPE 151 

is a marked lack of rain in the summer. The dotted line 
is drawn at the level which indicates a rainfall of ij 
inches a month, and less than this amount may be 
described as scanty ; if the rainfall is considerably 
below this level there is a serious shortage except in 
cold weather. In hot weather, when evaporation is great 
and vegetation needs much water, drought results from 
such a scanty supply. In north-western Europe, e.g. at 
Brest or London, the rainfall is always above this limit ; 
in central and eastern Europe, as shown by the graphs 
for Berlin and Moscow, the rainfall sinks a little below 
the ij-inch level, though in the cool or cold months ; in 
southern Europe, however, as shown for Marseilles and 
Madrid, it sinks considerably below and at the hottest 
time of the year. Hence the lower Rhone valley has a 
summer not only hot but very dry ; for three months 
there is heat and drought such as Northern France and 
Britain never experience. 

Mediterranean Climate and Vegetation. —The climate 
of Marseilles and the lower Rhone valley is said to 
be of the Mediterranean type, for it is found in almost 
all the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Its essential 
features are a mild and wet winter and a hot and dry 
summer. The lands which have this climate have also 
a characteristic type of vegetation. The natural growth 
is a kind of thicket composed of shrubs or small trees, 
dark in colour, keeping their leaves throughout the mild 
winter. They have to live through the hot dry summer, 
and must therefore be adapted to making the most of 
the scanty water supply of this period. As a rule, they 
have deep roots to collect as much moisture as possible 
from that retained in the sub-soil after the top soil be- 
comes parched during the drought. Moreover, the plants 
must lose as little moisture as possible through their 



152 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

leaves, which are neither large nor numerous as compared 
with the amount of wood in the tree or bush, usually 
have a hard surface, and sometimes become spiny and 
prickly. The same protection against loss of moisture 
is shown in the rough and thick bark, which in one kind 
of oak of these lands has developed into the " cork " 
exported to other regions. The mild winter allows the 
vegetation to grow during at least part of the winter, and 
in spring water and warmth are both sufficient ; the bushes 
and trees are therefore " evergreen," and old leaves do 
not fall until the new ones appear. 

The thicket-like growth is called " maquis " by the 
French, and " macchia " by the Italians ; there is no 
English word for it, for it does not appear in Britain, 
though some of the shrubs and trees which compose it 
have been brought to this country ; the holly is now a 
common English tree, laurels have been planted every- 
where, but others, such as the myrtle, the fig tree and 
rosemary, are rare except in southern England, while olive 
trees are seldom found outside the Mediterranean region. 

Forests of larger trees grow only in regions of greater 
rainfall, particularly in the mountainous parts. In 
districts where rain is more abundant and the heat is 
less, there are deciduous trees, particularly chestnuts 
and even beech, while forests of cork-oak and of pines, 
firs, cedars, and cypresses clothe many of the mountain 
slopes. 

Grasses which in northern Europe cover the ground 
during the whole year cannot live during the Mediter- 
ranean summer, so that there is a general absence of grass- 
land and meadows ; consequently cattle are relatively 
scarce. But the place of grasses is taken by plants which 
have underground bulbs and tubers. In these is a store 
of plant food which enables the plant to grow rapidly in 
the warmth of the spring and send up shoots and blossoms 



FRANCE 153 

which make the country look brilliant ; irises and arums, 
besides many others unknown in England, almost cover 
the ground for a short season, but die down in the summer 
leaving an almost bare soil. 

Man has cultivated and improved the wild olive and 
fig trees, the former yielding oil which takes the place of 
butter in the food of the Mediterranean peoples, and the 
latter giving a very nourishing food. Fruit trees abound ; 
the orange, lemon, citron, and almond are the best known, 
and the vine is grown almost everywhere. Wine is not 
a luxury as it is in Britain ; light wines are the common 
drink of the people. Careful cultivation is necessary for 
the growing of fruit ; the soil on the slopes is retained by 
terraces built up to prevent it being washed away, and 
frequently irrigation is required to supplement the scanty 
rainfall. Where there are areas of relatively level ground 
wheat is obtained ; it grows during the winter and ripens 
in the warmth and relative dryness of late spring. 
** Wheat, wine, and oil " are commonly regarded as the 
essentials of life in the Mediterranean region. 

The mulberry is an important tree, for on its leaves 
the silkworm is fed, so that the rearing of silkworms 
and the consequent spinning of silk are occupations of 
most of the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. 

Thus the Mediterranean climate is associated with a 
particular kind of natural vegetation and with a group of 
valuable productions which have determined the mode 
of life over large areas of Southern Europe and the 
neighbouring coasts of North Africa and South- Western 
Asia. 



FRANCE 

The preceding pages have given some account of the 
natural divisions of France and their inhabitants ; the 



154 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

country must now be considered as a whole, and its 
people as one nation. The area of France is nearly 
twice that of the British Isles, but its population is only 
about 41 millions, and therefore less than that of Britain, 
which has about 46 millions. 

The three European races are all represented in this 
population. The Northern race has occupied the Paris 
Basin and spread through the Gate of Poitou to the 
Garonne Basin, the Mediterranean race has extended 
up the Rhone- Saone valley, and the Alpine race has 
occupied the upland and highland divisions ; these races, 
however, have overlapped and there has been much 
mingling between them. Earlier language differences 
have largely disappeared, and the French language is 
everywhere spoken, though there are local dialects, 
particularly in the Provence region of the lower Rhone 
valley. Only in Brittany does another, and quite distinct, 
language persist ; here the Breton language is spoken by 
more than a million of the people. It is one of the Celtic 
languages, brought by the Alpine peoples ; these lan- 
guages have disappeared from most parts of central and 
western Europe, but have been preserved in the most 
westerly regions, e.g. the Breton of Brittany, the Welsh 
of Wales, the Erse of Ireland, and the Gaelic of Scotland. 

The French language is derived from Latin, and to a 
very large extent the civilisation of France has developed 
from that of the Roman Empire. The French are now 
one of the most highly educated of the nations of the world. 
Their language is in one way international, for negotia- 
tions between the governments of countries which have 
different languages are usually carried on in French and 
treaties between nations are expressed in French. The 
French language is very direct and precise, and this 
quality corresponds to the clearness with which the French 
people commonly think. They are direct both in thought 



FRANCE 155 

and in its expression ; their literature is remarkable in 
this respect. Also they have made great contributions 
to science and invention, as has been shown in recent 
years by French developments of motor-cars and aero- 
planes. In their actions, too, the French have a direct- 
ness of aim, and this has made them one of the foremost 
nations in commerce, for French merchants do business 
with all parts of the world, particularly the Mediterranean 
countries and southern Asia reached by way of the 
Mediterranean Sea. 

Moreover, the French are generally hard-working and 
economical ; they make the most of their resources, and 
this quality together with their ability to pursue a definite 
aim stood them in good stead when Germany after the 
war of 1 87 1 demanded a great sum of money as indemnity. 
They made almost incredible efforts and freed themselves 
long before other nations thought they could manage it, 
and the same economical spirit has enabled them to save 
money and become capitalists, lending their wealth to 
people of other lands ; much French capital, for exam^ple, 
has been lent to eastern Europe and the eastern Mediter- 
ranean lands. 

Although the French language and civilisation came 
originally from the Roman Empire, i.e, from the Mediter- 
ranean region, yet the present French state has been built 
up from the north. Paris, the natural centre of the 
northern region, was the capital of the early kingdom of 
the Franks, and as the power of the later kings increased 
their territories were extended till now the Mediterranean 
has been reached and indeed crossed, for the island of 
Corsica is politically a part of France, and there are very 
great French possessions in Northern Africa. 

The boundaries of the state have changed greatly 
during the centuries, and this is particularly true of the 
north-eastern region, where after the Great War, the 



156 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

restoration of Alsace and Lorraine added to France an 
area nearly as large as Wales and a population of nearly 
two million people. 

For many centuries the great political power of France 
was based on its agriculture, as its fertile lowlands sup- 
ported a population which was large when compared with 
that of other countries of Europe. Its agricultural pro- 
duction is still important, for the French are careful 
cultivators. 

The production of wheat, grown in all parts of France, 
especially the northern plains, is greater than that of any 
other country if we exclude the immense plains of North 
America and Russia, so that France is unlike all the 
neighbouring states in being almost self-supporting in 
this respect. Oats and potatoes are widely grown in 
the north, as well as some flax and hemp, and the sugar 
beet is important in the north-east. 

In the more southerly districts maize is obtained, and 
in the *' Mediterranean region,'* that is, in the lower 
Rhone Valley and the country adjoining the Mediter- 
ranean Sea, olive and mulberry trees are common. By 
the Mediterranean coasts, orange and citron trees grow, 
and everywhere in this region vines abound. As the 
sunny slopes and river valleys on all sides of the Central 
Plateau have vineyards, France is the greatest wine-pro- 
ducing country in the world ; from it is obtained about 
one-third of the total supply, and in quality as well as 
quantity its production is pre-eminent. 

The agricultural work of France, important though it 
is, cannot support a population which nowadays would 
be considered a great one, and trade and manufactures 
have to be considered as a basis for the national life. The 
position of France has not led to its possession of such 
a great centre of trade as London, nor has it been so 
favoured in this respect as the Netherlands. Its chief 



FRANCE 157 

trade route is that already mentioned from the Mediter- 
ranean between the Alpine Region and the Central Plateau. 
Marseilles has become one of the chief ports on the con- 
tinent, and it is the second city of France, having a 
population of over half a million. Lyons, at the junction 
of the Rhone and Saone, comes next in size with nearly 
as many people, but its growth is due to a greater extent 
to the development of manufactures. 

Paris also is a commercial city, in addition to being 
the political capital and having a certain amount of 
manufacturing. It is the centre of all the routes of 
northern France, and has grown till it is now tlie largest 
city on the continent, with nearly three million people. 
The lower Seine valley is one of the greatest trade routes 
of France, and the commerce of Havre at the mouth of 
the river comes second to that of Marseilles, while that 
of Rouen farther up the river follows closely behind. 
Bordeaux as the outlet of the Garonne Basin is almost 
as important, but Nantes and St. Nazaire at the mouth 
of the Loire have each only a small amount of trade 
owing to the lack of navigability of that river and the good 
communications between the upper and middle basin of 
the Loire with the Seine system. Brest, Cherbourg, and 
Toulon have more importance as naval bases than as 
ports, and Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk (Dun- 
kerque) are " ferry-ports," mainly engaged in trade and 
passenger traffic across the English Channel. 

The north-east of France has a close network of 
railway and inland water communications. The Paris 
Basin is connected by railways and also by rivers and 
canals with each of the other lowland areas of the east. 
Between the Channel and the Ardennes there is room 
for many lines and several waterways to reach the Belgian 
region ; the Col de Saverne gives access to Strasbourg 
and the Rhine Rift Valley ; the Plateau of Langres is 



158 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

crossed by Dijon to reach the Rhone- Saone valley. 
Similarly, the Rhone- Saone valley is connected by rail 
and water with the neighbouring lowlands, i.e. across the 
Langres Plateau with the Seine and Loire river basins, 
by the Gate of Belfort with the Rhine valley, and by 
the Gate of Carcassonne with the Garonne Basin. Water 
communication is lacking only between the Paris Basin 
and the Garonne Basin, though roads and railways con- 
nect these regions through the Gate of Poitou. 

It is in the eastern part of France, so well served by 
waterways as well as railways, that the chief manufactures 
are situated. The main reason for the manufactures 
being in this part is that coal deposits are here ; the means 
of communication have been largely made to serve 
industries already existing, but once made they help 
those industries to grow. 

By far the greatest industrial region is that of the 
north-east, based on the coalfield prolonged from Belgium. 
Linen is made here, for example at Cambrai, helped by 
the growth of flax in this region, while the wool obtained 
from the sheep of the chalk country aided the establish- 
ment of the woollen industry, carried on at Lille, Roubaix, 
Rheims, and other centres. Most of the wool is now 
imported, and so, of course, is the whole of the cotton 
which is manufactured at Lille and Amiens, and especially 
at Rouen, for this latter city can so easily import the raw 
material and send away the manufactured goods. 

Cotton is also manufactured on each side of the 
Vosges mountains. Originally the industry was carried 
on by the French at Mulhouse and other cities of the 
Rhine plain when this region belonged to France. 
After Alsace was taken by Germany, the French manu- 
facturers moved to small towns and villages on the western 
side of the Vosges, where water-power is now used. 
The Germans, however, continued the work at Mulhouse, 



FRANCE 159 

which became the greatest cotton manufacturing centre 
in Germany, and this great industry has now passed to 
France by the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine. 

By this restoration France has regained the centres of 
iron and steel working in the Moselle valley near Metz ; 
the region just south of this, around Nancy, also has an 
iron and steel industry, and as this was not taken by the 
Germans in 1871 the industry here has been developed 
entirely by the French people. 

These industries of the north and east of France 
have been carried on partly by means of the neighbouring 
deposits of coal, but in addition have had to import coal 
from Britain and from Germany. 

The coalfields around the Central Plateau are the 
basis of local manufactures. At Le Creusot there are 
iron and steel manufactures, this district being particu- 
larly famed for its production of armaments, and the small 
towns along the line of the St. Etienne coalfield have a 
similar industry. At St. Etienne itself, in addition to 
arms, ribbons and other silk goods are made, and silk 
manufacturing is also carried on in the lower Rhone 
valley, where nearly all the peasants rear silkworms and 
spin silk which is sent to the towns to be woven into 
fabrics of various kinds. Lyons is the greatest silk- 
manufacturing centre in the world, and its central position 
has led to other manufactures, in addition to its 
commerce. The Alais coalfield is relatively small and 
no great industry has developed in connection with it, 
but at Marseilles the importation of oil has led to the 
establishment of oil-refineries, soap works, and chemical 
works ; sugar refining and other food manufacturing 
have also developed at this port. 

The manufactures of France have not been able to 
become as great as those of Britain or Germany because 
of the far smaller coal resources ; even with the Saar 



i6o 



EUROPE OF TO-DAY 



coalfield, the output of France is only about one-fifth that 
of Britain. Consequently the commerce and other 
occupations depending upon mining and manufacturing 
have been limited, and the total population of France 
has not grown as those of its great neighbours have done. 
This is shown by the following table, giving the growth 
of the populations of the three states during the last 
hundred years ; the numbers represent millions of people. 



1820 



France 

Germany 

Britain 



30 
25 

21 



1870 



Germany 

France 

Britain 



40 
37 
31 



1920 



Germany 

Britain 

France 



56 
46 

41 



When agriculture was the chief basis of national life, 
France came first ; as mining, manufacture and trade 
have become more important, France has been out- 
stripped first by Germany and then also by Britain. 

With the repeated wars between France and Germany 
and the continual enmity between the two countries, 
France has seen the great growth of Germany with dread ; 
for this reason she took the opportunity of the victory of 
the Allies in the Great War to obtain as part of the repara- 
tion the Saar coalfield, hoping thus permanently to 
strengthen her position as compared with that of Germany. 

The slow growth of the population of France is a 
noteworthy fact. It is due to the very low birth-rate, 
that is to say, the French have smaller families than the 
people of other countries, and the number of births has 
decreased for many years. Consequently, with the 
careful use of the resources of the country, France is able 
to support the greater part of its slowly increasing popula- 
tion, and emigration to other lands is not at all great. 
But there is migration within the country ; from the less 



BELGIUM i6i 

fertile regions such as Brittany, the Central Plateau, and 
the mountain regions people go to get work in the more 
productive ones, especially the Paris Basin. Some of 
them migrate only for a season, for example, the field 
workers of Brittany who each year go in thousands to 
work in the fields around Paris, returning after the harvest, 
and the people of the Central Plateau, who go as porters 
or builders' labourers to Paris and other great cities 
during the winter when there is little work at home. 
Others leave their homes altogether, and so the population 
of the industrial and trading centres is of a very mixed 
type, and these migrations have helped considerably to 
bring about the fusion of the various race-elements into 
the present French nation. 



BELGIUM 

In area the Kingdom of Belgium is one of the smallest 
countries of Europe, for it occupies only a little more 
than 11,000 square miles, but it has nearly eight million 
people ; it is therefore noteworthy as having the greatest 
density of population of any European state. This is 
partly due to the resources of the country and partly 
to the fact that, speaking generally, the people work 
hard and live economically ; there is nothing to spare 
and little leisure. 

The position of the country has had a great influence 
upon the population. The Ardennes region is a part 
of the highland barrier separating the Germanic peoples 
from the French, so that the lowland plain and the Sambre- 
Meuse valley to the north of the Ardennes form a corridor 
between the homes of these peoples. Both peoples have 
settled in it ; moreover, invading armies have fought 
across it, so that it has been the site of many battle-fields 

M 



1 62 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

and as long as three centuries ago it was called " the 
cock-pit of Europe." 

Yet this land, made up of different geographical units 
and its population composed of people of different races 
and languages, has become one state whose inhabitants 
quite willingly live together and are conscious of a common 
nationality. 

There are two main groups in the population, the 
Flemings and the Walloons. The Flemings are akin to 
the Netherlanders and the Germans, and their language, 
Flemish, is very much like the Dutch language. They 
have spread from the German region westward along the 
North Sea plains. The Walloons are akin to the French 
and speak a dialect of the French language ; their written 
and printed language is French. They have extended 
from the French region over the southern part of the 
country. A line drawn across Belgium from east to west, 
passing north of Liege and south of Brussels, would 
divide the Flemish from the Walloon country. The 
Flemish portion is rather smaller in area, but the Flemings 
form more than half the population of Belgium, for the 
Walloon portion includes the thinly populated Ardennes 
uplands. As one would expect, the people of the coastal 
plains region frequently show the characteristics of the 
taller and fairer Northern Race, while on the whole those 
of the central and southern regions are of the shorter and 
darker Alpine type. 

Of course there is much intermixing, and this is 
specially the case in the city of Brussels. Brussels is the 
capital, situated about in the centre of the country, and 
having nearly three-quarters of a million of people, and 
although it is just within the Flemish district, the Walloons 
form an important part of its population. 

Although the North Sea plains of Belgium include 
districts of gravelly and sandy soils with little natural 



BELGIUM 163 

fertility, the Campine being the largest and least useful 
of these, yet other districts are more favoured, and almost 
everywhere the land has been thoroughly manured and 
otherwise improved. The peasants have to work very 
hard, and even the women and children labour in the fields 
for much of their time. Consequently there is a con- 
siderable production, mainly of oats and rye, but not 
much wheat, and of potatoes and sugar-beet, together 
with some flax. 

To some extent this production accounts for the dense 
population of the country districts of Belgium, but also 
the railways carry workmen at very cheap rates many 
miles from the towns where they work to their homes 
in the country. Consequently the towns are not as great, 
nor are they as smoky and dirty, as corresponding manu- 
facturing cities in Britain. 

The basis of most of the manufacturing of Belgium is 
the coal obtained from the long narrow coalfield which 
extends from the French frontier near Mons westward 
past Charleroi in the Sambre valley, towards Namur at 
the junction of the Sambre and Meuse, and onward to 
Liege on the Meuse where this river turns northward. 
All these places are mining centres, but much of the 
mining goes on in pits outside the limits of the towns, 
so that there are many small mining villages along or 
near the Sambre-Meuse valley. 

In the eastern part of the coalfield iron also is found, 
and even in the Middle Ages Liege made steel, using the 
wood of the Ardennes as fuel ; now it uses coal and much 
iron-ore has to be brought from the great deposits in 
Luxemburg and Lorraine, while the iron and steel 
industry has extended to a number of towns. 

In the Middle Ages there was another famous Belgian 
industry, the woollen manufacturing carried on by hand 
in several cities^of Flanders. At one time English wool 



i64 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

was exported to be made into cloth by the skilful Flemish 
weavers of Bruges, Ghent, and other towns of the plain. 
This industry declined as people of other regions learnt 
the art of weaving, but the making of linen has continued, 
and a cotton industry has developed. Ghent has cotton 
factories, and lace is made in considerable amount at 
Brussels, and Mechlin (Malines), while linen is manu- 
factured in the west of the country at Tournai and Courtrai. 

As with agriculture, so also with manufacture, the 
workers have a hard time ; even as late as the end of the 
nineteenth century one-third of them had to work seven 
days a week and the wages are on the average very low. 
The landowners in the country and the factory owners 
in the towns are better off ; they have acquired money 
and Belgian capital has been lent abroad ; for example, 
the owners of Belgian iron and steel works have taken a 
considerable part in developing, and supplying capital 
for, the iron industry of southern Russia. 

Both agriculture and manufacture in Belgium have 
been greatly aided by the very complete system of canals 
which connect the rivers, and by the very close network 
of railways and light railways which covers the northern 
part of the country. Belgium was the first country in 
Europe to develop a railway system ; it is largely state- 
owned, and is carefully planned to serve all parts, the 
lines radiating out from the chief centres ; its fares and 
traffic rates are extraordinarily low. The light railways 
are steam tramways running along the roads and bringing 
town and country into the closest touch. 

The foreign trade of Belgium has suffered great 
changes through the centuries. Five hundred years ago 
Bruges was not only the chief centre of cloth making, but 
also the most important harbour and port of the " Low 
Countries." It then had a stream which was navigable 
for the small craft of those days, but was later silted up 



BELGIUM 165 

so that the town is now inland. Soon after the decline 
of Bruges, the sinking of the land near the mouth of 
the Schelde, aided by a great storm which washed away 
the obstructing mud and sand, opened the mouth of the 
Schelde to trade, and made Antwerp accessible even to 
large ships. For a time Antwerp was the chief centre 
of the trade from the East Indies, but its commerce 
declined, at first because of wars and later because the 
Netherlanders, through whose territory trade along the 
lower Schelde has to pass, put heavy tolls upon the traffic. 
Only in the second half of the nineteenth century were 
these tolls removed, and now that trade can pass un- 
hampered it has grown till Antwerp is the second largest 
city of Belgium and one of the chief ports of the con- 
tinent. 

Arrangements have to be made between Belgium and 
the Netherlands for the navigation of the Schelde, for 
unless the lower part of the stream is kept open and 
provided with buoys and lights to guide shipping, the 
upper part is almost useless. Belgian ships may use the 
lower Schelde freely in time of peace, but in war time only 
commerce may go on ; warships may not then pass, and 
Antwerp is cut off, as far as regards naval and military 
purposes, from the sea. 

The silted-up Belgian coast is naturally unsuited to 
commerce. Ostend is a Channel ferry-port, and although 
a canal has been made from Bruges to the artificial harbour 
at Zeebrugge, it is little used. 

A canal has been constructed from Ghent directly 
northwards to the small port of Terneuzen on the lower 
part of the West Schelde estuary, but this canal, like the 
lower Schelde and the Maas, passes through Dutch 
territory. The Netherlanders are not anxious to divert 
into Belgian territory trade which might pass through 
Rotterdam, and so difficulties have arisen between the two 



i66 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

countries, and for half a century Belgium has considered 
that the Netherlanders have exacted hard terms when 
they have made Belgium pay all the cost of the canal 
even at Terneuzen itself, and also failed to give facilities 
for dealing with the increasing amount of traffic. It 
will be noticed that all the important waterways of 
Belgium reach the sea through Dutch territory, and 
difficulties such as those which arise from this fact fre- 
quently occur when lines of communication are cut by 
political boundaries ; these difficulties can only be 
satisfactorily solved when the two countries concerned 
live in a friendly way, neither desiring to gain at the 
other's expense. 

Although Belgium is such a small country, it possesses 
a great territory in the Congo region of Central Africa. 
This was obtained in the first instance as a personal 
possession of its King Leopold II., and after disgraceful 
misgovernment under his rule, it was transferred to the 
care of the Belgian nation and became the only Belgian 
colony. 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE 

In this section will be considered the three great 
southern peninsulas and the neighbouring islands of the 
Mediterranean Sea. But as in the case of the other 
great divisions of Europe, it is difficult to separate this 
region from the rest of the Continent. 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE 167 

For example, the Alps skirt the Mediterranean Sea 
and are continuous with the Appennines, yet they are 
mainly in Central Europe ; again, there is no break be- 
tween the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula and those 
of Central Europe. 

In regard to climate and vegetation, too, these three 
great peninsulas do not coincide with the region which 
has the characteristic Mediterranean climate with its 
mild, wet winter and hot, dry summer, and the accom- 
panying natural growth of evergreen trees and shrubs. 
These were described in the section on Western Europe, 
for they are found in the south-east of France. On the 
other hand, a large part of the western or Iberian Peninsula 
and the greater part of the eastern or Balkan Peninsula 
have a climate and vegetation not of the Mediter- 
ranean type ; so, too, has the Plain of Lombardy, which 
although part of Italy is scarcely part of the Italian 
Peninsula. 

In each of the great peninsulas the structure is some- 
what similar in spite of the differences in their shape. 
The Iberian Peninsula consists of a great block of ancient 
hard rock forming the west and centre, to which are 
joined fold mountains — the Cantabrians on the north 
and the Sierra Nevada and adjoining ranges on the south. 
In the block and in the neighbouring portions of the fold 
mountains minerals are found in large amount. 

The Italian Peninsula at first sight seems different, 
for it has a '' backbone " of fold mountains, and there are 
only small areas of block structure. Yet fragments of a 
great block are there, in the form of the larger islands 
of Sardinia and Corsica and smaller islands such as 
Elba, and also on the mainland of Italy, opposite to Elba, 
in the province of Tuscany. It will be shown later that 
these Italian islands have only quite recently been 
separated from the mainland. Italy itself is poor in 



i68 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

minerals, but the islands of block formation have deposits 
of several metals. 

The Balkan Peninsula has a great core of block struc- 
ture, extending from the mountain region near the Danube 
at Belgrade south-eastward to the iEgean Sea, and as in 
the case of the Iberian block, so here also fold mountains 
are joined to it on either side, the Balkans on the north- 
east and the Illyrian Alps and their continuation on the 
v^est and south-west. Moreover, minerals are widely 
distributed in and near the central block. 

The i^gean Sea was once the site of a mountain area 
with lofty ranges joining the Greek region and Asia Minor, 
but with deep long valleys and somewhat circular basins. 
This area sank down, the valleys and basins became the 
deep hollows of the i^gean Sea and the chains and peaks 
remained as islands. Crete, for example, is a part of a 
great curved chain of limestone mountains which extended 
from the south of the Greek peninsula of the Morea on 
the west, by the islands of Carpathos and Rhodes to Asia 
Minor on the east. 

If the artificial cut of the Suez Canal is excluded, 
the only opening of the Mediterranean Sea to the ocean is 
the narrow and shallow Strait of Gibraltar. Because it 
is thus shut off, the tides of the great ocean do not pene- 
trate to the Mediterranean and there is consequently 
no rise and fall of its waters, and no scouring of the river 
mouths by the in-flow and out-flow of tidal currents ; 
thus the deposit of river alluvium goes on unhindered 
and navigation suffers. 

Also, although the surface waters of the great ocean 
may be warm its deep waters are cold, for these creep 
slowly from arctic to tropical regions. The shallowness 
of the Strait of Gibraltar prevents these cold waters 
entering the Mediterranean, so that at all depths its 
waters are warm, and form a reservoir of heat which in 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE 169 

winter is gradually transmitted to the surface and hence 
has a moderating effect upon the climate. 

The warm climate of the Mediterranean region 
favours agriculture, which is the predominant occupation 
of the people. Rain, however, is often lacking, and there 
is consequently a marked difference between the produc- 
tivity of the districts in which irrigation is practised and 
those in which it is not employed. Also many areas 
which might be made into fertile lowlands are ill-drained 
and marshy. This is not only a loss to agriculture but a 
great cause of disease, for the people of such areas suffer 
terribly from malaria. 

This disease is not directly conveyed from one person 
to another, but by mosquitoes of a certain kind which 
bite an infected person and transmit the malaria to others 
bitten afterwards. The mosquitoes breed in stagnant 
water and do not go far from their breeding-places ; 
therefore if the district can be freed from stagnant water, 
for example, by the draining of marshes, the mosquitoes 
are exterininated and the disease is no longer carried from 
person to person. Thus malaria has been entirely got 
rid of in certain districts where all precautions have been 
taken, and the draining of marshy areas is now proceeding 
with most beneficial results. 

The Iberian Peninsula. — Broadly speaking, the 
Iberian Peninsula is a massive highland region, cut off 
from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees almost as effec- 
tively as it is separated from Africa by the narrow Strait 
of Gibraltar. The Pyrenees are continued westward by 
the Cantabrian mountains, and these end in the broad 
highland of Galicia whose westernmost point is Cape 
Finisterre. The Cantabrian mountains are an important 
mineral region, much iron being obtained. The north 
coast and the whole of Galicia are well- watered and 



lyo EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

abundantly forested. The heavy rains give rise to tor- 
rents of water pouring down the mountains toward the 
sea, and consequently this region has been very much cut 
up and is dissected by deep valleys. A slight sinking, 
especially marked in the western part, has allowed the 
sea to penetrate the valleys and so produce an abundance 
of small inlets. These afford good harbours, but the 
high mountains prevent lines of traffic being developed 
from the interior to take advantage of the harbourage. 

The western coastal region is very different, for 
south of the Minho there are considerable coastal plains, 
the mountains coming to the sea only near Lisbon and at 
Cape St. Vincent. The coastal plains are fertile and 
productive and form the most important part of Portugal, 
which extends southward from the Minho past the 
narrow mouth of the Douro and the wide estuary of the 
Tagus as far as the narrow estuary of the Guadiana. 

East of these coastal plains rises the great block of 
the central tableland of Spain, called the Meseta. The 
upper courses of the Douro, Tagus, and Guadiana have 
cut deep and narrow valleys in the plateau, and the rivers 
have rapids which are found as far down their courses as 
the frontier between Spain and Portugal. 

There is no very definite western edge to the Meseta, 
for it is broken by the river valleys and by the hills which 
run down to the Portuguese lowlands, but on its eastern 
side the plateau rises to a high mountain mass overlooking 
the broad Ebro valley and the Mediterranean coast. 
The heights overlooking the Ebro River are known as the 
Iberian Mountains ; they have been cut across only by 
the Jalon, a tributary of the Ebro, whose valley gives one 
of the few natural routes connecting the interior of the 
Meseta with the rest of Spain. Further south the Jucar 
drains from the plateau to the Mediterranean Sea, but its 
valley is reduced to a narrow, steep-sided canon looo 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE 171 

feet deep. The eastern part of the country has very 
little rain ; consequently there is little weathering to 
widen the valley cut downwards by the river which 
collects its water from a considerable area of highland. 

The southern edge of the Meseta forms the northern 
rim of the Plain of Andalusia, and beneath it runs the 
Guadalquivir. Seen from the river valley the edge 
appears like a wall of mountains, known as the Sierra 
Morena. (The term Sierra is applied to many of the 
Spanish mountain chains ; it means a saw, and refers to 
the jagged saw- like appearance of the crests.) The 
streams flowing down the Sierra Morena to the Guadal- 
quivir have cut the edge into an irregular country, wild 
and desolate in appearance, but they have not formed any 
valleys giving an easy route through the mountains. 

The Meseta is not only cut by the deep river valleys ; 
it is divided also by mountain ranges. A series of these 
rise from the plateau and form a highland edge to the 
south of the basin of the Douro ; the eastern part of 
this edge is known as the Sierra de Guadarrama. Thus 
the upper part of the Douro basin forms an almost com- 
pletely enclosed region, the plateau of Old Castile. To 
the south of the Sierra de Guadarrama is the somewhat 
similar plateau of New Castile, but this is composed of the 
upper basins of two rivers, the Tagus and Guadiana, 
separated by the ridge of the mountains of Toledo. 

The Meseta as a whole is a block of hard, ancient rock 
like those of the uplands of Central Europe, and the 
ridges are formed of particularly resistant material such 
as granite, but the enclosed plateaus of Old and New 
Castile have a soil of a different kind. In the past they 
were occupied by great lakes in which soft deposits were 
laid down before they were drained by the outflowing 
rivers. Some of these deposits are salt and these are 
useless for agriculture, but others would be fertile if the 



172 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

climate were not so dry. As it is, the country is a poor 
steppe-land with so little natural vegetation that there is a 
Spanish proverb which says : " A lark going into Castile 
must take its own food." 

New Castile is further south, and therefore rather 
hotter and drier, than Old Castile. The temperature 
curve for Madrid in Fig. 3 shows that in summer the 
average temperature reaches nearly 80°, and the graph in 
Fig. 4 shows that for the four hottest months there is a 
great lack of rain, while even in the rest of the year the 
supply is by no means ample. Moreover, there are 
considerable differences in temperature not only between 
summer and winter but also between day and night, for 
the region is shut off from the moderating influence of 
sea breezes, and so at times the plateau is bitterly cold in 
winter as well as scorchingly hot in summer. The climate 
is anything but pleasant, and perhaps most unpleasant 
are the clouds of dust which in summer fill the sky, 
penetrate the houses and almost choke the people. 

In the extreme south of New Castile are the flat, high 
plains of la Mancha where Don Quixote had his 
adventures ; this is the most arid part of Spain, and there 
are neither trees nor upstanding rocks or hills to give any"^ 
shade. Here the headwaters of the Guadiana often 
sink into the dry, gravelly soil to appear again lower down. 
The name means the Duck River and has been given be- 
cause the stream disappears and reappears in its course, 
as a diving duck does in swimming. 

The Meseta as a whole is of little value for agri- 
culture and much of it is only useful as rather poor pasture 
land, but the southern edge has considerable mineral 
wealth. 

At its eastern extremity the Sierra Morena merges 
into the mountain area which forms the south-eastern 
part of the peninsula. This is frequently called the Sierra 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE 173 

Nevada, but the proper name for the whole of the many 
ranges is the Betic Cordillera ; the term Sierra Nevada, 
or Snowy Range, should be applied only to the portion 
which extends behind the Mediterranean coast between 
the ports Malaga and Almeria. Here are the highest 
mountains of Spain, rising to over 11,000 feet, and the 
melting of the snows in summer gives water to the Guadal- 
quivir at a time when the other rivers of the peninsula 
(except in the north-west) have a greatly diminished 
supply. To its relatively abundant water the Guadal- 
quivir owes its name, which means the Great River, 
The eastern part of the Betic Cordillera, like the adjoin- 
ing Sierra Morena, is a mineral-producing region. 

The plain of Andalusia is undulating country in its 
upper part, naturally rather arid so that some portions 
must be irrigated by water from the mountains to make it 
fertile, but near the mouth of the river there are great 
marshes ; nevertheless Andalusia is one of the most 
productive regions of Spain. In these latitudes cultiva- 
tion can go far up the mountains wherever the ground 
either is naturally fairly level or has been built up in 
terraces. The olive, for example, is grown to a height of 
over 4000 feet on the southern side of the Sierra 
Nevada. 

On the Mediterranean shores of Spain, in the pro- 
vinces of Granada, Murcia, and Valencia, there are only 
small lowlands, but these have been made very fertile 
by irrigation ; here are the huertas or gardens, producing 
all the Mediterranean fruits (oranges and lemons, almonds 
and raisins, grapes and pomegranates, dates and figs, olives 
and mulberries), besides cereals (maize and wheat), and 
even some cotton, sugar-cane, and rice. 

The Ebro valley is shut off from the Mediterranean 
Sea by the Catalonian Mountains through which the river 
winds in a narrow valley ; because of this barrier and 



174 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the sand-choked delta beyond, the Ebro is not navigable, 
except for small boats in the middle course of the river. 
Its wide triangular basin is like the Meseta in having 
very little rain, but as it lies in a hollow, water from the 
surrounding highlands can be distributed over the land, 
and such fertility as it has is due to irrigation. 

On the whole, therefore, the peninsula is not naturally 
very fertile ; the north and north-west have the western 
European type of climate with forests and meadows ; 
the central plateau has a climate tending to be of the 
continental type, with extremes of temperature and a lack 
of rain, and so is largely a pastoral region ; the south- 
western region has a Mediterranean climate and is rela- 
tively fertile ; the south-eastern region is drier but where 
irrigation is possible the huertas are wonderfully pro- 
ductive. 

In the northern and southern mountain areas minerals 
(including coal and iron) are abundant, but the mining 
has not led to a great development of manufacturing 
industries. 

The Strait of Gibraltar is narrow, and it is due to 
faulting which let down the mountain region once con- 
necting the Sierra Nevada with the mountains of North 
Africa. From the geological point of view it is of recent 
formation, though it occurred long before the Ice Age. 
Over the land-bridge which here connected Europe and 
Africa plants spread and animals migrated. There is 
therefore a great similarity in the scenery, the vegetation 
and even the animal life on the two sides of the Strait, 
so that apes are found on the " Rock " of Gibraltar, 
and further north chamaeleons and flamingoes remind one 
of Africa. 

The Plain o! Lombardy. — This great plain was once 
part of the Adriatic Sea, but into the hollow between the 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE 175 

Alps and the Appennines were brought masses of alluvium 
from the mountains and also there was a slow uprising 
which brought the deposits out of the sea. The filling 
up of the Adriatic is still going on, as is shown by the 
fact that the sea was named from the town of Adria which 
in Roman times was on the coast between the mouths of 
the Adige and Po, although it is now some fourteen miles 
inland. 

The lower part of the plain is marshy and there are 
lagoons behind the coast, while dykes have had to be 
constructed to protect the valley of the Po from its floods. 
Now most of the region is fertile, and it is largely irri- 
gated from the streams which drain to the river Po. 

The Plain of Lombardy has a colder winter and a 
greater summer rainfall than the peninsula of Italy ; its 
climate and productions are therefore of the Central 
European rather than the Mediterranean type. 

The Italian Peninsula. — The greater part of the 
Italian Peninsula is occupied by fold mountains which are 
probably the most recent in the world. Indeed, the pres- 
sures within the Earth's crust still show themselves by 
the earthquakes which occur at intervals, particularly 
along certain fault-lines such as that which has caused 
the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria, the 
" toe " of Italy. Here repeated shocks have shifted 
considerable areas sufficiently to destroy buildings and 
cause loss of life. 

Volcanic activity is due to the same cause, and occa- 
sionally there are outbursts of material : molten rock 
or lava ; ashes ; dust ; or steam which condenses and 
forms a rain of warm water. Great volcanic cones have 
been built up, such as that of Etna, on the island of 
Sicily, 20 miles across and 10,000 feet high, Stromboli 
and its neighbours which rise out of the Tyrrhenian Sea 



176 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

and form the Lipari Isles, and Vesuvius on the main- 
land near Naples. Flatter accumulations, usually in the 
form of sheets of lava, also occur : the Campagna between 
Rome and the sea was made in this way, and with the 
deposits of the Tiber forms a great unhealthy marsh. 

In some regions the volcanic activity has now nearly 
died out and only hot springs or the escape of gases 
persist. Some vents give out boracic acid vapours, from 
which boracic acid is condensed and then evaporated to 
a solid form. 

The Appennines are also remarkable for being mainly 
formed of very young and very soft materials, quickly 
worn away by weathering and streams. Masses of clay 
slip down the hills and cause serious land-slides, and the 
rivers rapidly build out swampy deltas into the tideless 
sea. South of Rome, sand has been washed along the 
coast and hindered the drainage from the hills behind ; 
here are the great Pontine Marshes. 

In some parts the mountains are of lim.estone, 
especially in the Neapolitan region {i.e. near Naples, 
named in ancient times : Neapolis). The famous and 
beautiful Bay of Naples is due to a basin-like subsidence, 
where the faulting has exposed cliffs of white and shining 
stone. In the north of the Appennines the limestone has 
been changed to marble ; near Carrara and Massa are 
the quarries from which marble for statuary is sent to 
all parts of Europe. 

Apulia, the *' heel " of Italy, is also of limestone, but 
the layers have not here been folded ; they form a hori- 
zontal table of permeable rock through which the rain 
sinks so easily that there is not a single river in the Apulian 
peninsula. The *' spur " of Mt. Gargano is another and 
higher limestone plateau. 

Between the hills of the Tuscan block and the great 
curve of the Appennines is a hollow, once filled with water 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE 177 

and now drained by the Arnq and the Tiber ; the valleys 
of these rivers are fertile and densely populated districts. 
So too is the lowland region between the Neapolitan 
Appennines and the Tyrrhenian Sea. 

The Appennines form a great barrier to intercourse 
between the east and west of the peninsula, and also 
between the Plain of Lombardy and the Western Mediter- 
ranean. Three passes are important : near the junction 
of the Appennines and the Alps are the Bocchetta and 
Giovi passes, leading from the west of the plain to Genoa, 
while the la Futa pass crosses the Tuscan Appennines 
between the east of the plain near Bologna and the valley 
of the Arno, 

The Italian Islands. — The north-east of Sicily, like 
the adjoining province of Calabria, is of the block 
structure, but the greater part of the island is like the 
Appennines, of younger and softer material. It has been 
described as a " chaos of rounded hills," but nevertheless 
it is a fertile land. Sulphur is an important mineral 
product. 

Malta may be considered with the Italian islands, 
although it belongs to Britain, for it is a limestone mass 
bearing witness to a past bridge between Italy and 
Africa ; this is shown by the numerous remains of African 
animals, e.g. elephants and hippopotami. 

Corsica may also be considered with the Italian 
islands although it is politically a part of France, for 
Corsica and Sardinia are very similar to one another. 
Like Malta, they were in the past joined to the lands 
around, and even now the animals of these islands are 
said to resemble those of Africa and Spain more than those 
of Italy. These islands are mainly cliff-bounded, moun- 
tainous regions with wild scenery ; they are largely 
forested and abound in minerals, copper and silver-lead 

N 



178 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

being the chief, but they are little cultivated and have 
relatively few inhabitants. 

The small island of Elba between Corsica and Tuscany 
is another block-fragment marking a past connection ; 
it has important iron deposits. 

The climatic conditions of the Italian lands on the 
whole are favourable to agriculture, although the south- 
east of the country suffers from a lack of water. The 
mosquito-breeding marshes and the earthquake shocks 
are the greatest natural drawbacks to the country. 

The Balkan Peninsula. — In structure this may be 
thought of as a partly destroyed bridge between Europe 
and south-western Asia ; and it has indeed played the 
part of a bridge in human history, but as a means of 
communication it suffers from two great defects : in the 
first place, the subsidence of the ^gean area is con- 
tinued into the Black Sea region, so that the bridge is here 
broken by a waterway between the two seas ; in the 
second place, the Balkan Peninsula is so mountainous 
that there are only two natural routes across it between 
Central Europe and the south-east of the region. 

Although the peninsula has a long western coast- 
line its back is turned to Italy, for the drainage of nearly 
all the rivers is to the east : by the tributaries of the 
Danube to the Black Sea in the north and by various 
rivers to the ^gean Sea in the south. Moreover, the 
limestone mountains of Dalmatia rise steeply from the 
Adriatic Sea and are so porous that the region is of 
the Karst type, with little vegetation, few inhabitants 
and much underground drainage. Only one river, the 
Narenta, connects the coast with the interior in the whole 
stretch from the Gulf of Trieste to the angle in the coast- 
line where it turns from south-east to south. At this 
point (in the north of Albania) there is a change ; the 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE 179 

mountains which have hitherto run south-eastward 
parallel with the coast form a range, the Albanian Alps, 
which runs inland towards the north-east, and opposite 
to these another range, the Shar Dagh, runs in the same 
direction. Between the two ranges is a relatively low 
piece of country through which the river Drin finds its 
way to the sea ; this may be called the Albanian Gate, 
and it gives a fairly easy way from the Adriatic into the 
interior. In the south of Albania the mountains resume 
their south-easterly direction and form a backbone to 
the peninsula portion of Greece where they are known as 
the Pindus Range ; only small lowlands and unimportant 
river valleys are found in the western region of Greece. 

The coastal plains of Albania are swampy and malarial ; 
they are little used. 

The mountains of Jugo-Slavia are of the Karst type 
only in the west ; towards the east they are of a more 
mixed sedimentary type, and also they become lower. 
The rivers, too, flow with less interruption and link the 
upland region to the lowlands of the Save. Of these 
streams, the Bosna is ** back to back " with the Narenta, 
and there is a route, although rather a difficult one, 
between the two river valleys. Sarajevo, the old capital 
of Bosnia, is on this route near the head of the Bosna 
River. 

By far the most important of these rivers is the Morava, 
which runs northward to the Danube. Its lower valley 
forms the chief route of the peninsula, for from it branch 
out the two great ways from Central Europe to the south- 
east. One of these continues southward up the Morava 
valley and over a low water-parting to the valley of the 
Vardar, and so goes to the i^gean Sea at the Gulf of 
Salonika. 

The other route leaves the lower Morava valley at 
Nish, and goes south-eastward up that of its tributary 



i8o EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the Nishava. Continuing to the south-east it rises into 
the high basin of Sofia, which lies between the Balkan 
fold mountains and the central block of the peninsula. 
It then goes down from the Sofia basin into the greater 
and lower basin of Philippopolis through which runs the 
Maritza River. It follows the course of this river through 
the hill country on the south-east of the Philippopolis 
basin into the rather similar basin of Adrianople. Here 
the Maritza turns sharply southward, but the main 
traffic-route goes eastward to Constantinople and so to 
Asia. 

Within the curve of the Maritza is the Rhodope Moun- 
tain mass, the least cut-up part of the central block of 
the Balkan Peninsula. West of it, the block is not only 
cut by the Morava and Vardar rivers, but also by the 
Struma ; the valley of this river is not of such great 
importance although it does give a road from the Sofia 
basin southward to the ^gean Sea. 

Apart from these valleys, which are used for agri- 
culture as well as traffic, the central block is mainly 
highland, and though it bears forests and pastures and 
has mineral deposits it is of relatively little value to man. 
But there are exceptional districts, which have subsided 
and form basins of some importance Many of these 
were once filled with water which drained into them from 
around, and large lakes of this kind are shown on the 
map where Greece, Albania, and Jugo-Slavia meet, but 
most of the lakes have now been drained by the out- 
flowing streams and their sites are now occupied by more 
or less marshy plains. These form a welcome addition 
to the cultivable and pastoral resources of the country. 
In Greece, two such basins are clearly to be seen south- 
west of the Gulf of Salonika, where they form the plains 
of Thessaly. Thessaly is the name frequently used for 
the region surrounding these plains, Macedonia is the 



MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE i8i 

region of the Vardar and Struma rivers, and Thrace is the 
region between Macedonia and the Sea of Marmora. 

The Balkan fold mountains consist of a number of 
parallel limestone ridges which become lower eastward 
until they disappear by the coast of the Black Sea. The 
portion of this coast which belongs to Bulgaria has only 
small rivers flowing to it, for the Maritza and its tributary 
the Tundja turn south, and the Danube turns north ; 
Bulgaria therefore lacks direct water-communication with 
the sea. North of the Balkan Mountains there is a 
plateau of fair fertility, gradually descending towards the 
Danube but with a steep edge overlooking the river. 

The relief and shape of the land have a marked effect 
upon the climate, for the Mediterranean type extends 
only a little distance inland. The hot, dry summer and 
mild, wet winter, with the natural evergreen thickets and 
the cultivated fruits, are found only in the coastal regions 
and on the islands. 

The interior even of the Greek peninsula, although 
it is no great distance from the sea, has rather different 
conditions, for its altitude gives it a lower temperature 
and a greater rainfall, and it is, therefore, clothed with 
forests of chestnut and other deciduous trees. 

The greater part of the Balkan Peninsula has a climate 
rather like that of Central Europe ; it is naturally a forest 
land, the chief trees being beech and oak ; there is much 
pastoral work and cereals are grown. Maize is the chief 
crop, but in the north where it is somewhat cooler wheat 
is rather more important. 

The eastern regions tend to have a longer winter ; 
also there is less rain, and in the enclosed basins of 
Philippopolis and Adrianople a lack of water is particu- 
larly marked. These are steppe lands ; cultivation is not 
important, though som.e wheat is grown, and the popula- 
tion is scanty. 



1 82 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

These conditions are found in the lower lands of the 
peninsula ; the mountains which occupy a large part 
of the area are of course much colder, and even some of 
the inhabited basins are high enough for the altitude to 
modify the climate and productions. For example, Sofia 
is nearly 2000 feet above sea-level, and the average 
temperature in January is as low as that of Berlin, and 
hence considerably lower than that of London. The 
Balkan Region is therefore the least Mediterranean in 
climate and productions of the southern peninsulas of 
Europe. 



SPAIN 

Although the Iberian Peninsula is so compact in shape 
it forms two separate states, and within it four different 
languages are spoken. 

The peninsula gets its name from the first inhabitants 
of whom there is any knowledge, the Iberians. The race 
to which they belonged is uncertain and their descendants 
can no longer be distinguished as regards physical 
characteristics from the later comers, who are mainly of 
the Mediterranean race. Yet the language of the earlier 
inhabitants has been handed down, and is still spoken by 
the Basques ; these people number nearly half a million, 
and live on the borders of France and Spain where the 
P3Tenees and Cantabrian mountains unite. 

The languages of the rest of the peninsula are derived 
from Latin, for the region was part of the Roman Empire. 
Adjoining France at the eastern end of the Pyrenees is 
the province of Catalonia ; the Catalonians are akin to 
the people of south France, and their language is nearer 
to the " Provengal " dialect of France than to the 
Spanish language. Catalonian is also spoken and written 



SPAIN 183 

by most of the people of the province of Valencia which 
joins Catalonia on the south. 

Spanish is the language of the greater part of the 
peninsula, but Portuguese is spoken in all the western 
region, in Galicia as well as in Portugal itself. 

This difference between the Spanish and Portuguese 
languages, as well as the existence of the two separate 
states, is due to a most important historical event, the 
conquest of nearly all the peninsula by the Moors, and 
its re-conquest by the Christians. The Moors were 
Mohammedans who in the eighth century crossed from 
northern Africa and overran all the country except the 
north where small Christian states maintained themselves. 
Three of these states gradually gained power and slowly 
reconquered the land. In the centre was Castile and in 
the basin of the Ebro was Aragon ; these increased their 
territories, and the Moors were pressed southward until 
the latter retained only the region of Granada in the 
Sierra Nevada. Finally, the union of Castile and Aragon, 
at the end of the fifteenth century, brought nearly all 
Spain under one rule and the Moors were expelled. 

From the north-west another southward movement 
took place, so that the western region was reconquered 
by different people from those of the greater part of the 
peninsula. Though Galicia was afterwards incorporated 
into Spain, and has adopted the Spanish written language, 
the southern part of this western region remained inde- 
pendent and formed Portugal. During the long period 
of separation the many differences between the Portu- 
guese and the Spaniards were developed, including the 
difference of language ; the modern Spanish language 
has arisen from the Castilian dialect. 

Spain shows many results of the Moorish occupation, 
particularly in the south. The Moors were in some ways 
highly civilised, and the most beautiful buildings in 



i84 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

Spain are due to them. The Alhambra at Granada is a 
Moorish palace of exquisite beauty, and the beautiful 
cathedral at Cordoba (Cordova) was a Mohammedan 
mosque. To the Moors is also due the wonderful 
irrigation systems which are now by far the best feature 
of Spanish agriculture. Many Moorish words have 
become part of the Spanish language, and Moorish names 
are common. 

The population of the south of Spain, especially in 
Andalusia, have Moorish blood in their veins, and this 
forms one of the differences which mark out the various 
peoples of the peninsula from one another. Catalonians, 
Castilians and Andalusians differ in descent and physical 
appearance, in customs, in language, in traditions ; so 
marked are the contrasts that it is quite possible that the 
present Kingdom of Spain may not continue as one 
political unit. 

After the expulsion of the Moors, Spain became one 
of the great powers of Europe and took a prominent part 
in the discovery of new lands which marked the end of 
the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. 
The discovery of America in 1492 was made by Chris- 
topher Columbus, who, although a Genoese, was in the 
service of Spain. Because of the part played in these 
discoveries, Spain acquired vast territories across the 
oceans, and for a time it became the " mistress of the 
world." 

The military spirit which defeated the Moors and 
conquered other lands was not accompanied by industry 
and perseverance in the arts of peace, and although Spain 
for a time obtained wealth from abroad it neglected its 
resources at home and gradually declined into poverty. 
Religious persecution against those who embraced new 
faiths was added to the attraction of wealth in other lands 
in causing the more active-minded and vigorous people 



SPAIN 185 

to go abroad, and now the Spanish have a reputation for 
indolence which only the energetic Catalonians escape. 

Practically all the Spanish colonies have now been 
lost, but over a great part of America, south of the United 
States, the population is in part of Spanish descent and 
the Spanish language is spoken ; for this reason, Spanish 
is one of the chief languages used in commerce. 

The agricultural productions of Spain vary greatly 
according to climate. In the north and north-west grow 
maize and millet, and fruit trees like those of western and 
central Europe, while cattle are reared on meadow lands. 
On the plateau cultivation is often neglected ; much of 
the land is held in large estates and little worked, while 
the peasants who own the rest are unskilled and not 
industrious. In Old Castile wheat is the chief crop, and 
sheep-rearing is carried on in all parts. There is a regular 
migration of sheep and shepherds up to the highlands 
in the summer and down to the lower lands in the bleak 
winter. 

The Ebro valley and the Plain of Andalusia are in 
part irrigated and obtain olives, grapes, and other fruits, 
besides wheat, but the huertas, described above, are the 
most productive regions though very restricted in area. 
They are especially important in the lowlands near 
Valencia and in Murcia, and from them are exported 
wine as well as grapes, and the other fruits. 

The mining of the north coast is important ; iron is 
obtained in large quantities and exported from Bilbao 
and Santander. A less amount is mined near Oviedo 
and exported from Gijon, and here some coal is also 
obtained. Coal exists in other parts of the peninsula, 
but it is Uttle worked. Iron is also obtained from the 
east of the Sierra Nevada near Almeria, and in the east 
of the Betic Cordillera near Murcia and Carthagena. 
Much lead and silver are also obtained in this district as 



1 86 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

well as from the Sierra Morena, especially near Linares, 
Further west near the Rio Tinto are copper mines which 
have been worked since the time of the Romans ; the 
copper is exported from Huelva at the mouth of 
the river. Mercury is obtained from Almaden, in the 
southern part of the Meseta. 

Manufacturing, however, is small. In the Bilbao 
region there is an iron industry, but the chief industrial 
centre is at Barcelona, which is the second city of Spain. 
Its manufactures of cotton and other textiles have little 
advantage of situation except a sheltered harbour which 
enables raw materials to be imported and nianufactured 
goods to be exported. The energetic character of the 
people seems to be the greatest factor in the development 
of this city, though it has a fairly easy road across the 
Catalonian mountains into the Ebro Valley. 

Lack of natural routes and navigable rivers and also 
of well-made roads and railways has hindered the develop- 
ment of Spain. Madrid was selected as the capital, for 
it is in a central position, and so most easily reached from 
the populated districts scattered around the margins of 
the peninsula. Yet access to it is difficult, and it is little 
larger than Barcelona, having less than three-quarters of 
a million people. 

Seville is at the head of navigation for sea-going ships 
on the Guadalquivir, and is the commercial centre of 
Andalusia, but the channel of the river has had to be 
artificially deepened, and Cadiz which is south of the 
river mouth has gained in traffic at the expense of Seville. 
Zaragoza (Saragossa) is the natural centre of the Ebro 
valley, near the place where the Jalon valley gives a road 
into Castile. 

The area of Spain (including the Balearic Islands off 
the eastern coast) is more than half as large again as that 
of the British Isles, but its population is less than half 



PORTUGAL 187 

as great, namely, about 21 millions. So little are the 
natural resources developed that there is nevertheless a 
very considerable emigration, mainly to South America. 
The great majority of the Spanish people are very 
poor, probably poorer than those of any other European 
country with the exception of the war-stricken ones of 
the central and eastern parts of the continent ; their 
poverty is one reason why there have been many up- 
risings among the people. This poverty and the 
differences between the people of the various provinces 
do not give promise of a stable government. 

Gibraltar is a British possession ; it is a small rocky 
peninsula which is regarded as the " Key of the Mediter- 
ranean," and for that reason is a strongly fortified base 
for warships, as well as a coaling station for merchant 
vessels. 



PORTUGAL 

The Republic of Portugal has less than one-fifth the 
area of Spain, but its population is about one-third as 
large, namely, nearly 7 millions ; the greater density of 
population in Portugal is due partly to its greater fertility 
and partly to the greater energy of the people. 

The Portuguese are of very mixed origin ; the position 
of the country, on the Atlantic seaboard and the lower 
courses of the rivers, has exposed them to the incursions 
of many peoples. In the south there is even a Negro 
element introduced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
when Portugal took a large part in the opening up of 
lands beyond Europe. 

Prince Henry of Portugal, called " the Navigator," 
began this work in the middle of the fifteenth century 



1 88 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

by sending out important expeditions to the African 
coasts, and the Portuguese not only discovered new lands, 
but also acquired great colonies, including Brazil in 
South America, considerable areas in Africa, and portions 
of India. Yet Portugal, like Spain, rapidly declined in 
power ; this was partly because it was annexed by Spain 
for a time and partly because it suffered, as Spain did, 
from the emigration of many of its most active and 
liberal-minded citizens. Now the greater part of its 
possessions have been lost, but the Azores and Madeira 
islands which lie to the west and south-west are part of 
the Republic, and there are large Portuguese territories 
in east and west Africa. 

There is no marked natural boundary between Spain 
and Portugal, although rapids on the rivers near the 
frontier prevent navigation between the two countries. 
In the north the Galician highlands are continued into 
Portugal, and the abundant rainfall of this part causes the 
region to be well forested with oaks and chestnuts ; in 
the mountain area goats and sheep are kept and rye is 
grown, while on the lower lands cattle are reared and 
wheat and maize are cultivated. 

From the Douro to the Tagus the natural vegetation 
is definitely of the Mediterranean type, and the olive and 
vine are largely cultivated ; the production of wine is 
particularly great on both sides of the Douro, port wine 
being named from Oporto. Wheat and maize are also 
grown in this central region as well as the Mediterranean 
fruits. 

South of the Tagus the rainfall is less, and there are 
large areas of uncultivated land on which only sheep and 
goats pasture. Even these areas are now being taken 
for agriculture, and other parts are quite productive, 
growing fruits and maize. The coastal strip forming the 
extreme south of Portugal, running eastward from Cape 



PORTUGAL 189 

St. Vincent, is particularly fertile and resembles the 
huertas of southern Spain. 

Pine woods cover parts of the country, particularly 
near the sea, and there are extensive areas of oak, especially 
cork oak, in the southern region adjoining Spain. Swine 
feed on the acorns, and the cork is exported in great 
quantities. 

The sea also yields its harvest to the Portuguese. 
Sardines and tunny fish are caught, especially off the 
southern coast and off Setubal, south of the mouth of the 
Tagus. This is considered the centre of the sardine 
fisheries, and near it are also large oyster banks. 

The country does not produce much mineral wealth. 
A very little coal is mined, and the only metals which are 
of any value are copper, iron, and wolfram. Salt is 
obtained by evaporation of sea-water, which is let into 
large shallow enclosures behind the coast ; this is done 
extensively near Setubal. 

Manufacturing has not developed on a large scale, 
though textiles are made in the larger towns, such as 
Lisbon and Oporto, both for home use and for export 
to the African possessions. 

The export of wine, cork, fish, fruit, and some metals, 
pays for the import of foodstuffs and manufactured 
goods ; the trade is considerable in amount and is carried 
on mainly at Oporto at the mouth of the Douro, and 
Lisbon, where the sheltered estuary of the Tagus forms 
a fine harbour. Lisbon is the capital, with a population 
of about half a million. At the end of the eighteenth 
century a large part of it was destroyed by an earthquake, 
a tragic consequence of the continuance of faulting in 
this region. 

Although the people of Portugal are not so poor as 
those of Spain, there is much emigration, mostly to Brazil, 
its former colony, and to the United States. 



190 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

ITALY 

Two thousand years ago the strong rule of the Romans 
not only united the whole of Italy, but made it the 
political centre of their Empire which extended over all 
the Mediterranean region and even beyond the mountain 
barriers of the north into Central and Western Europe. 
After the Roman power declined, Italy split up into small 
districts which had a very changeful history. Other 
European states arose and dominated parts of this 
country, and it was repeatedly ravaged by war. In the 
Middle Ages, there were certain cities, such as Genoa, 
Florence, and Venice, which were independent and indeed 
acquired power over surrounding and outlying districts. 

In the time of their prosperity, these small Italian 
states devoted much of their wealth to building beautiful 
churches, palaces, and city halls, of which the walls were 
often decorated with wonderful frescoes and pictures. 
The subjects of the paintings were mostly religious, but 
the background nearly always showed the scenery of the 
country around the city. The artists expressed their joy 
in the beauty of their native landscapes — the clear air, 
the small walled towns perched on hills, the pleasant 
fertile valleys, and the mountains blue in the distance. 
Thus it is not only for the scenery, but also for its buildings 
and its pictures, that people from other countries visit 
Italy. . 

Among the Italian city states Genoa and Venice gained 
special importance by trade ; they were the great com- 
mercial centres of the world, organising most of the 
trade between Asia and Europe until the " land route '* 
through Constantinople was closed after its conquest by 
the Turks. This closing of the land route stimulated 
the discovery of the *'sea route" round Africa, and 
caused the decline of Italian trade and the rise of that of 



ITALY 191 

the Netherlands, for which, moreover, no crossing of the 
mountains of Central Europe was necessary. 

Not until the second part of the nineteenth century 
wa? Italy freed from foreign rule, and then most of its 
states were united into one kingdom. Even after this, 
the Pope was the ruler of the " Papal States " of the 
central part of the peninsula, but in 1870 these came 
under the government of Italy and Rome once more 
became her capital. 

Since then Italy has acquired considerable possessions 
in northern Africa, and at the close of the Great War the 
Trentino and southern Tyrol were added, together with 
the region round Trieste and the peninsula of Istria. 

The boundary between Italy and Jugo-Slavia in this 
region was a matter of long dispute between the two 
countries. Trieste and the western part of the Istrian 
Peninsula had a majority of Italians, but the whole of 
the upland region east of Trieste and the eastern part of 
Istria had a considerable majority of Jugo- Slavs. 

By the treaty which Italy made with Britain, France, 
and Russia as the price of entering the war, Italy was to 
have all the country west of Fiume, with the boundary 
running very much as the present frontier does, together 
with part of the coast of Dalmatia to the south-east and 
most of the Dalmatian islands. The reasons for this 
claim were that the lands had belonged to Venice in the 
past (before they were Austrian) and that as a result there 
were Italian people and an Italian type of civilisation in 
certain parts ; also Italy desired to hold both sides of 
the upper Adriatic in its power, lest in time of warfare 
Venice and the Venetian lands should be in danger of 
naval attack. 

After the war Italy further claimed the town of Fiume, 
giving as a reason that it had an Italian population, but 
doubtless desiring to obtain the port so that all the trade 



192 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

of the upper Adriatic would have to pass through ItaHan 
territory (see Fig. 5). 

The Jugo-Slavs objected, showing that when the town 
of Fiume and its adjoining suburb were taken together 
there was a majority of Jugo-Slavs, and that Fiume was 
the natural and only port for the north of Jugo-Slavia. 

After more than two years of discussion and frequent 
threats of war, a compromise was effected. Italy kept 
the region west of Fiume including the islands adjoining 
the Istrian Peninsula, but gave up its claim to the Dalma- 
tian coast and the other islands ; by this she included more 
than half a million Jugo-Slavs and their lands in her 
territory. Fiume was to be an independent state on the 
boundary of the two kingdoms. The port of Zara, on 
the mainland, 100 miles to the south-east, was exceptional 
in having an Italian majority, and it has been made 
autonomous, but under Italian suzerainty, i,e, it is self- 
governing for local affairs, but its relations with other 
states will be determined by Italy. 

With these additions Italy has an area about that of 
the British Isles, and a population of about 40 millions. 
The chief resource of the country is its agriculture. 
Wheat is by far the most important crop, and the chief 
food of the people. Maize ranks next, both in the 
amount of production and as an article of food ; it is 
grown mainly in the north. The irrigated lands of the 
Plain of Lombardy used also to produce a great deal of 
rice but the amount is decreasing, yet because of the 
unhealthiness of the work in the flooded rice-fields this 
decrease is a positive advantage to the people. The 
cattle-rearing and cheese-making of the plain depend upon 
the repeated cutting of the sown grasses of the irrigated 
lands, and not upon natural pastures which are far less 
productive. Vines and mulberry trees are largely grown 
here, and the land is so thoroughly utilised that the vines 



ITALY 193 

are trained over the mulberry and other trees, while 
grain is grown beneath them. Poultry are important also 
in this northern part of Italy and the eggs are exported, 
together with dairy produce, wine, olive oil, and silk. 

South of the Po lowland the products are more of the 
Mediterranean type. In the hill country there are 
forests of chestnut trees, the nuts being utilised as a 
food, there are large herds of sheep tended by migratory- 
shepherds, and the lower slopes are terraced for olive 
trees and vines. The coastal lowlands (where they are 
not marshy) grow wheat, olives, vines, and many of the 
Mediterranean fruits. The market gardens around 
Naples are most intensely cultivated, producing, for 
example, lemons, tomatoes, and the vegetables which, for 
lack of more nourishing but dearer food, the peasants eat 
in large amount. 

Although agriculture is almost the only occupation 
of the south, manufactures have recently developed rapidly 
in the north. The making of silk is very important, and 
Milan has now rivalled Lyons as a silk-market. The 
manufacture is carried on not only in the city but very 
widely in the northern part of the plain, where there is 
the advantage of w^ater-power brought from the moun- 
tains. Cotton manufacturing is a more recent develop- 
ment, and so is the steel industry. The latter is rather 
remarkable, as the only Italian ores are those of Elba 
and Sardinia, together with some deposits in the western 
Alps so inaccessible that they were utilised for the first 
time during the extreme need for steel for munitions in 
the Great War. Not only raw material but also coal has 
to be imported, mainly from England, and water-power 
is used as far as it can be in this industry. Water-power 
is also increasingly employed to drive the electrified 
railways of Northern Italy, and it is transmitted across 
the plain as far as Venice. A notable feature of these 

o 



194 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

industries is the extent to which they are scattered among 
the small towns, as well as the greater ones, of the plain. 
Milan is the largest city of the north, a centre of trade 
in the plain as well as of that which crosses the Alps by 
the central routes ; Turin and Verona have corresponding 
positions in connection with the western and eastern 
passes (see Fig. 5). Venice, built on islands in the 
Adriatic by refugees from invaders, has been enabled to 
persist as the Adriatic entry to the plain because it is on 
the safe side of the Adige and Po, whose deposits are 
carried southward by currents. Genoa takes the trade 
with the western Mediterranean and Atlantic, for the 
Bocchetta and Giovi passes give easy routes across the 
mountains. At the south-eastern side of the plain, 
Bologna is on the land route and railway which skirt the 
western shore of the Adriatic, and it communicates by the 
la Futa route with Florence in its fertile valley. The 
towns of the south are largely the centres of crowded 
agricultural regions, and Naples with two-thirds of a 
million people is the largest city of Italy, slightly exceed- 
ing Milan in size and considerably larger than Rome. 
Sicily is densely populated and has three large ports, 
Palermo, Catania, and Messina. 

It will be noticed that Italy has almost as many people 
as the British Isles, although it has practically no mining 
and relatively little manufactures and commerce. This 
great population cannot be supported by agriculture 
except at a low standard of living and by hard work, even 
the wives of the labourers having to work on tlie land. 

There is a marked difference in this respect, as in so 
many others, between north and south Italy. The people 
of the north are poor though industrious ; those of the 
south are less industrious on the whole (though this differ- 
ence is more marked in towns than in the country), and 
they live for the most part in abject poverty. The wages 



THE BALKAN STATES 195 

are scarcely sufficient to maintain life ; a few years 
before the war women worked in the olive plantations at 
2id. a day, and the government employed them at only 
3^?. a day on the railways. 

The north is in many ways a modern community, 
progressive and democratic ; the south is still in the 
Middle Ages, the nobles have great estates and their 
tenants live in an almost servile condition, poverty- 
stricken and uneducated, and quarrels are settled by 
violence instead of by appeal to the law. In all these re- 
spects Sicily has the worst reputation. Moreover, malaria 
is a constant scourge in almost all parts of the south. 

The country cannot, indeed, support its population 
and so emigration is very great. There is a temporary 
migration out of the country, e.g. men go to other countries 
as navvies on road making and railway construction, and 
a permanent exodus, partly to North America, but largely 
to South America, where there are now so many more 
immigrants from Italy than from Spain and Portugal, 
that in Argentine and Brazil the hard-working Italians 
are almost colonising these parts of the New World. 



THE BALKAN STATES 

The peoples and problems of the various states of 
the Balkan Peninsula are so intermingled that they must 
first be considered together : later each of the states can 
be separately noticed. 

If the three groups of the Jugo-Slavs (Slovenes, 
Croats, and Serbs) are taken as one, there are still six 
different peoples in the peninsula. The distribution of 
these peoples should be carefully examined in Fig. 8. 
In the south and on the islands and coasts of the JEge^n 
Sea are the Greeks. They are of mixed race and are 



196 



EUROPE OF TO-DAY 




THE BALKAN STATES 



197 




c => ^ 

« 5 a 



198 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

descended only in part from the ancient Greeks ; never- 
theless their language is similar to classical Greek, and it 
is a bond between the inhabitants of the scattered islands 
and shores. 

On the uplands of the south are a small number of 
Vlachs, akin in descent and speech to the Rumanians ; they 
have no lands of their own, for they are wandering 
shepherds driving their flocks from place to place and 
selling small wares among the settled peoples. The 
Vlachs are decreasing in number, as they leave this 
nomadic life to take up other work, mainly in the towns, 
and become lost among the other peoples. 

In the central part of the western mountain region 
live the Albanians, a finely-built, hardy people of uncer- 
tain origin, probably Slav, though their language is quite 
different from that of the Jugo- Slavs. They are pastoral, 
keeping flocks of sheep and goats, but their life is partly 
nomadic and partly sedentary, for they move with their 
animals up on the mountains in summer and down to the 
coastal lowlands in the winter, and yet they have their 
permanent villages in the mountain valleys and grow 
crops in the neighbouring fields. The Albanians are a 
warlike folk, particularly those of the north. 

The most numerous people are the Jugo- Slavs. When 
in the fourth century the Slavs from the Carpathian 
region settled in the northern part of the Balkan Penin- 
sula, they formed three groups, but sooner or later each 
of these groups was conquered by a greater power. The 
Slovenes of the north-western region of the present Jugo- 
slavia were made subject by the peoples of Central 
Europe ; the Croats of the centre had an independent 
kingdom till they were overrun by the Magyars ; the 
Serbs had for a time a more extensive state, but the 
eastern part of it was conquered by Bulgarians, who were 
akin to the Magyars. Although the Bulgarians were the 



THE BALKAN STATES 199 

masters of this region, many of the Slavs remained, and 
in the course of time the people were largely Slavonic in 
appearance and language, and almost entirely Slavonic 
in v^ays, even though they retained from the Bulgarians 
their name, and their hostility to their Serbian neighbours. 

The Serbs long preserved an independent kingdom, 
but in the fourteenth century they v^ere conquered by the 
Turks, who from Asia Minor overran a great part of 
south-eastern Europe. Only two small areas in the 
Balkan Peninsula escaped subjection. On the Adriatic 
coast, cut off from the rest of the region by the mountain 
wall, small trading and fishing communities retained 
their independence ; Ragusa was the centre of a tiny 
republic. Also in the adjoining highlands some Serbs 
repelled the Turks and formed the small kingdom of 
the Black Mountain, that is, Montenegro, and these 
Serbs became known as Montenegrins. 

During the time of their subjection the Balkan 
peoples have had a most unhappy history ; those of the 
western portion were under the rule first of one power 
and then of another, while in the central and eastern 
portions the Turks kept their hold for hundreds of years. 

The rule of the Turks was almost the worst that can 
be imagined. Although the Turkish peasants, as they 
live in Asia Minor and even in settlements in parts of the 
Balkan Peninsula nearest to Asia Minor, are peaceable 
and hard-working people, yet the Turkish ruling class 
are merely the oppressors of their subjects, and in Europe 
the officials extorted taxes and the landowners extorted 
rents from the Balkan peoples with the utmost severity 
and cruelty, in some cases to the point of driving them 
to the mountains and taking their cattle and lands, while 
the Turkish soldiers, brought from all parts of the 
Turkish Empire, enforced their rule even by repeated 
massacres. Some of the people saved their lives and 



200 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

possessions by changing their Christian religion for 
Mohammedanism, and so became reckoned as Turks. 
But rebellions took place, and the other Christian states 
attacked the Turks, so that the oppressed peoples slowly 
obtained their freedom. 

During the nineteenth century the Turkish rulers 
were expelled from most of the Balkan region and three 
small states were formed in addition to Montenegro ; 
namely, Serbia (then called Servia) and Bulgaria in the 
north, and Greece in the south, while Turkey stretched 
from Constantinople across the peninsula as far as the 
Adriatic, including Albania. This was the condition of 
things at the beginning of the present century, and the 
division of the country among these states is shown in 
Fig. 6. 

The strip of territory held by Turkey contained only 
a relatively small number of Turkish peasants, apart from 
the officials and soldiers ; the population was mainly 
Greek in the south and close along by the i^gean coast, 
Bulgarian and Serbian in the greater part of Thrace and 
Macedonia, and Albanian in the far west. 

Thus the Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian peoples were 
only in part free, and the small states desired to drive 
out the Turks completely and extend their own borders 
to include their kinsmen. Moreover, Serbia was com- 
pletely enclosed by its neighbours, and greatly wanted 
an outlet to the sea. Bulgaria had, indeed, a strip of 
coast on the Black Sea, but its chief river (apart from the 
Danube, which turned north through Rumania) was the 
Maritza, and it desired the whole course of this river, 
and with it an outlet to the i^gean Sea. 

Therefore in 19 12 Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria 
attacked Turkey and quickly won this " First Balkan 
War," as it is called, driving the Turks back, so that 
they retained only part of the Adrianople basin and the 



THE BALKAN STATES 201 

country between this and Constantinople. Greece ex- 
tended northward and gained the mouth of the Vardar 
and the important port of Salonika. Serbia and Bulgaria 
had arranged, before the war began, to divide Macedonia 
between them ; Bulgaria was to have the southern part 
where many, and probably most, of the population were 
Bulgarian (note the overlapping of the markings on Fig. 8), 
and Serbia was to have the northern part, together with 
the northern part of Albania. 

Serbia desired this latter region because the Albanian 
Gate would here give it an outlet to the Adriatic, for it 
must be noted that Austria held all the Adriatic lands 
west of Montenegro (see Fig. 6). But this extension of 
Serbia was objected to by Austria, who feared an increase 
of Serbia's power and objected to this country reaching 
the Adriatic where the sea narrows, so that the two sides 
of this entry would be held by Italy and Serbia respec- 
tively, and the position of the Austro-Hungarian ports of 
Trieste and Fiume would therefore be rendered insecure 
in time of v»^ar. 

Moreover, the Albanian Gate was inhabited by 
Albanians and not by Serbians, and the other European 
Powers supported Austria's objection, so that Serbia was 
forced to give up her proposal. Albania was made into 
an independent state, and Serbia turned for an outlet 
to the Vardar route to the iEgean. But the Greeks had 
established themselves at the mouth and Bulgaria had 
been promised the Macedonian region south of Uskub 
(Skoplie). Serbia now wanted to obtain this region, and 
this led in 19 13 to the " Second Balkan War " between 
Serbia and Bulgaria. Bulgaria was quickly defeated and 
lost all the Macedonian territory, while Turkey took the 
opportunity to occupy nearly all the Adrianople basin, 
and so cut off the Maritza route to the ^gean, and 
Rumania seized a strip of the north-eastern part of the 



202 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

country adjoining the Dobruja. Bulgaria gained only a 
small piece of -^gean coast west of the Maritza mouth, 
cut off from the main part of her territory by the Rhodope 
mountains. She was very bitter in consequence, and 
joined the Central Powers against Serbia during the Great 
War. Once more she was defeated, and the country 
south of the Rhodope Mountains was lost, so that her 
territory is now very restricted. Bulgaria is a much 
smaller state than either Greece or the new Jugo-Slavia, 
for Greece gained the whole of the northern coastal lands 
of the i^gean, while Serbia united with Montenegro and 
with the Serbian, Croatian and Slovene lands previously 
held by Austria and Hungary. 

The political quarrels of the Balkan States have there- 
fore centred upon two matters : the inclusion of territory 
occupied by kinsmen, and the possession of easy routes 
to the sea. Even now the boundaries of the states do not 
correspond with differences in the population, and 
Bulgaria at least lacks the outlets she desired ; moreover, 
the repeated warfare has left bitter memories and angry 
feelings, so that the continued peace of the Balkan 
Peninsula is not yet assured. 

Yet many, if not most, of the peasants have no wish 
to engage in political strife ; they want only to be left 
to work their lands unmolested. They are but little 
educated (though Greece is more favoured than other 
states in this respect), and in many ways are less advanced 
than the inhabitants of most European countries. 

Agriculture and pastoral work of a simple kind is 
almost the only occupation ; the region has various and 
widely distributed minerals, but these are little worked, 
and manufactures scarcely exist. This lack of develop- 
ment is due to the evil effects of the Turkish government 
which have persisted after the Turks were expelled, and 
to the general insecurity of the region, for the necessary 



THE BALKAN STATES 203 

knowledge and capital can only be supplied from Western 
Europe or America, and will not be given until capitalists 
and business organisers can count upon a fairly safe 
return for their investments. 

Greece. — The Kingdom of Greece is now about as 
large as England, and its population numbers about 
six million people, including over one million non-Greeks, 
mainly Bulgarians and Turks. 

The Greek territories appear very scattered, but 
nevertheless they are remarkably alike in many ways. 
They all have the Mediterranean climate and natural 
vegetation, and the people follow the occupations of fruit 
growing and the making of olive oil and wine. Wheat 
and other cereals are not grown very largely, for much of 
the territory is hilly. There is a considerable surplus of 
fruit, particularly of currants, and as all the lands are 
close to the sea, this can be easily exported in return for 
wheat and manufactured goods. Tobacco is another 
important export. Wines are made for home use, but 
not largely exported. 

As the Greeks are good seamen they spread through 
the ^gean region, settling on all the islands and surround- 
ing shores to grow their products, and they take their 
wares to more distant lands. Being skilful bargainers, 
they succeed in establishing themselves as merchants in 
the towns of all the Eastern Mediterranean, so that there 
are many Greeks outside the Greek state, for example, 
in Constantinople and Alexandria. 

The Adrianople basin, ceded to Greece after the Great 
War, is different in climate and productions from the 
rest of the Kingdom. It is a scantily populated steppe 
land, except for the more fertile valley of the Maritza 
Adrianople, in size the second city of Greece, is at the 
junction of this river and its tributary the Tundja and 



204 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

on the trade-route which here leaves the Maritza valley 
to go to Constantinople. 

As mining and manufacturing are undeveloped in 
Greece, the chief towns are merely trading centres, the 
only exception being Athens, which is the seat of the 
government, situated in what is now almost the centre 
of Greece. It is built on the site of the ancient Athens, 
under the steep hill known as the Acropolis with its ruins 
of wonderful buildings. The modern Athens is a fine 
city several miles from the coast, and the trading and 
small industrial concerns are at its port, the Piraeus, which 
has a good natural harbour on the -^gean Sea. Athens 
and the Piraeus together have a population of over 
300,000 inhabitants. 

Salonika is as large as Athens ; it has more than local 
importance as a commercial centre, for it is at the exit 
of the Vardar route though a few miles from the delta 
of the river. It serves as a port for Jugo-Slavia, under an 
agreement between the two countries. 

Albania. — The area of Albania is a little larger than 
that of Wales, but its population is less than one million. 
As explained above, the state is of very recent formation, 
and it is doubtful if it can be carried on successfully 
without help from more advanced states. There is little 
unity among its people, for the southern and northern 
groups speak very different dialects ; moreover, two- 
thirds of the people are Mohammedans, and the Christians 
of the south belong to the Greek Church while those of 
the north belong to the Roman Catholic Church. These 
differences could be overcome, but the people have had 
little to do with one another and no training in working 
together. Indeed, in the north, they are divided into 
clans between whom feuds are carried on accompanied 
by bloodshed and murder, even worse than the famous 



THE BALKAN STATES 205 

vendetta which used to exist in Corsica. The establish- 
ment of order and of a settled government is the great 
problem of this country ; if that problem is solved the 
Albanians may live a fairly prosperous life, for they are 
industrious and intelligent and their flocks and fields can 
supply most of their simple needs. The towns are small, 
Scutari is the largest and Durazzo, the port, is quite 
small, for the Albanians trade but little with other 
countries. 

Jugo-Slavia. — The official name of this country is 
" The Serb -Croat- Slovene State," and the name well 
expresses its constitution. Its area is rather less than 
that of the British Isles, and its population is about 
14 millions. 

The new state will have to overcomxC difficulties some 
of which resemble those of Albania, for it is composed 
of differing elements. The distinction at the present time 
between the Serbs and the Croats is not one of race, but 
rather one of religion, for nearly all the Serbs of " old 
Serbia " belong to the Greek Church, and those inhabi- 
tants of the Serbo-Croat lands of Bosnia, Herzegovina, 
and the northern plains who also belong to the Greek 
Church call themselves Serbs, while those who belong 
to the Roman Catholic Church call themselves Croats ; 
still further west, the Slovenes are practically all Roman 
Catholics. Moreover, there are a considerable number 
of Mohammedans, who, even when not racially diff'erent 
from the Slavs, are known as Turks. 

Differences of language also exist. The Serbs and the 
Croats speak the same Serbo-Croat language, but they 
write the w^ords in different characters, the Croats using 
the same (Roman) alphabet as the peoples of Western 
Europe, but the Serbs use the same letters as the Russians, 
which resemble those of the Greeks. The Slovenes have 



2o6 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

a different dialect, though they and the Serbo-Croats 
can understand one another. 

The inclusion of Bulgarians in the south, and still 
more markedly the inclusion of Magyars in the north, 
increase the complexity, but the Serbians, unlike the 
Albanians, have long had an organised state, while the 
more western Jugo-Slavs have had some experience in 
local self-government under the Austrians. 

Just before the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy, representatives of all the Jugo-Slavs in that 
state met at Zagreb and proclaimed their desire to unite 
with Serbia, and a few days later a National Assembly of 
the people of Montenegro deposed their King (who had 
fled from the country during the Great War) and pro- 
claimed their union with the other Jugo-Slavs. 

From the economic point of view Jugo-Slavia may be 
divided into three regions : (i) the Dalmatian coast and 
islands ; (ii) the mountain-and-valley land near the head 
waters of the Save and south of the line formed by the 
Save and Danube ; (iii) the hill-and-plain land north of 
this line. 

(i) Dalmatia has the Mediterranean climate and the 
associated productions. The vine is the chief source 
of wealth and wine and olive oil are exported. The 
amount of cultivable land is very limited, and the people 
have become famous fishermen, getting many kinds of 
fish, particularly sardines. The water-power of this 
region, as well as that of the upper basins of the rivers 
flowing eastward, is considerable and already is used to 
some extent in the making of chemicals. The limestone 
of the hills and the good harbourage enable portland 
cement to be made and exported cheaply at Spalato, which 
is the chief commercial centre. 

(ii) The mountain-and-valley lands draining to the 
Save and to the Danube below Belgrade, together with 



THE BALKAN STATES 207 

the upper part of the Vardar basin, have the Central 
European type of productions. Maize is the chief crop, 
barley is increasingly grown, and wheat and oats are also 
obtained. The vine is widely cultivated, but the wine is 
mostly consumed in the country ; there is, however, a 
large trade in prunes, i.e. dried plums, and other fruits 
of the kind cultivated in England grow well. Tobacco 
is another product. 

Much of the country is perhaps better suited for 
keeping animals than for agriculture, but the work has 
been handicapped by the disturbed conditions, and it is 
not yet carried on as scientifically and successfully as it 
might be. Nevertheless, the number of cattle, sheep, 
goats, and swine is quite considerable. The forests 
of beech and oak, and at higher levels of pines and 
firs, might yield a greater return if they were better 
managed. 

The towns in this region are small : Sarajevo on the 
Bosna-Narenta route, Uskub (Skoplie) and Monastir 
(Bitolia) in the upper Vardar basin, and Ljubljana 
(Laibach) on the upper Save, are the only ones needing 
mention. 

(iii) The hill-and-plain land north of the Save- 
Danube line is also mainly agricultural ; the low hills are 
covered with woods and vineyards, and the plains are 
either lands ploughed chiefly for maize or wheat, or 
meadows on which cattle are kept. 

In all the occupations of Jugo-Slavia there is the 
possibility and probability of a considerable increase. 
The nature of the productions, and the situation of the 
country (cut off from the Adriatic by mountains, and else- 
where surrounded by countries which obtain similar 
goods) do not favour trade. The largest towns of the 
state are on the Danube and Save, between the mountain 
and plain type of country ; Zagreb is on the upper Save, 



2o8 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

and Belgrade is at the junction of the Save and Danube. 
Belgrade is at present a small town of about 100,000 
inhabitants, but it will probably grow rapidly as the 
capital of the new State. 

Fiume. — This city forms a tiny independent state. 
Its commercial importance is of recent growth, since tJie 
Hungarians connected it by railway with the interior and 
constructed docks and quays for the shipping. It is still 
the Mediterranean outlet for Hungary and northern Jugo- 
slavia, and unless Italy and Jugo-Slavia divert the traffic 
to other routes (which would be a great economic loss) 
the state should have a prosperous future. The city and 
its suburb Sisak together have a population of over 
100,000 people, of whom rather more than half are Jugo- 
slavs, and less than half are Italians, and a small number 
are Magyars. 

Bulgaria. — The kingdom of Bulgaria now has an 
area about equal to that of Scotland, and a population of 
about five millions. This population is, of course^ pre- 
dominantly agricultural, and most of the peasants have 
small holdings of arable land of their own, while woodland 
and pasture-land are owned by the communes, and the 
members of these have rights of cutting wood and grazing 
their animals. The people are hard-working and are 
slowly adopting improvements learnt from Western 
Europe. Consequently, there is not the poverty of large 
numbers of people which is found in many other countries, 
and the region was not devastated by war. If Bulgaria 
has been unfortunate in loss of territory, her people have 
not been left in want. Wheat is the chief crop, maize 
coming second, and barley third ; vines are widely 
cultivated and fruit widely grown. The upper valley of 
the Tundja, which is sheltered from the north by the 



THE BALKAN STATES 209 

Balkan Range, is particularly fertile, and here are the 
gardens from which attar of roses is obtained. 

As in the other Balkan States minerals are abundant, 
but little worked ; the possession of coal and iron will 
probably lead in the future to a development of manu- 
factures. 

The largest town is the capital, Sofia, but this has 
little more than 100,000 people ; Philippopolis, on the 
Maritza, comes next. The trade with other countries 
is not great, and the ports, Varna and Burgas on the 
Black Sea, and Ruschuk on the Danube, are only small 
towns. It must be remembered, however, that through 
Bulgaria passes the railway traffic between Central 
Europe and South-Western Asia. 

Turkey. — Turkey in Europe has been reduced to 
very small proportions. It consists of little more than 
the city of Constantinople and the neighbouring country. 

Moreover, the whole region known as the Zone of the 
Straits, including Constantinople and the country on 
both shores of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora and 
the Dardanelles, has been placed under international 
control. A Commission appointed by the League of 
Nations is to supervise the waterway and to ensure its 
freedom to ships of every nation both in peace and in war. 
This is regarded as an important matter, for otherwise a 
state holding territory on either side of the Straits could 
block the passage and so, as Turkey did in the Great War, 
cut off all maritim.e communication between the Black Sea 
countries and the rest of the world. 

Constantinople on the shore of the Bosphorus com- 
mands this route, and also the land route from Europe to 
Asia, which is broken only by this narrow waterway. 
With the development of Asia Minor and of Mesopotamia, 
the land route will have increasing importance. 

P 



210 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

In earlier times (before the sea route to the East was 
discovered) this was the chief road by w^hich people 
migrated, armies marched and traffic was conveyed 
between the two continents, and so Constantinople had a 
situation which made it one of the most noted cities in 
history. 

Its name was given to it by the Emperor Constantine, 
who made it for a time the capital of the Roman Empire, 
and although it suffered from political changes it was for 
many centuries the finest city in the world. After its 
conquest by the Turks it declined in commerce, and was 
considerably altered ; mosques were built, and it took on 
a more Eastern appearance. Now it is partly European 
and partly Turkish both in aspect and in population, for 
of the million inhabitants half are Mohammedans and 
half Christians. 



EASTERN EUROPE 

Eastern Europe is remarkable because it has suffered 
very little from the geological disturbances which affected 
the rest of the continent ; it is therefore in the main a 
great lowland with so little relief that it may fairly be 
called an enormous plain. Apart from the Ural Moun- 
tains which bound it towards northern Asia, and the 
mountains of the Crimea and the Caucasus which bound 
it on the south, there is practically no area over looo feet 
in height, and even though the map may show a difference 
of colour indicating that the ground is 500 or 600 feet 
above sea-level, yet the distances in these regions are so 



EASTERN EUROPE 211 

great that where the slope up to the higher ground is 
gradual, it could not be noticed. 

Also the lack of geological disturbance has allowed the 
sedimentary layers, of which most of the surface is made, 
to remain soft and loose ; this is an advantage for agri- 
culture, but there is a lack of stone for making buildings 
and roads. Indeed, roads are very bad indeed over much 
of the region, and this greatly hinders communication. 

The only exceptions to this general condition of 
flatness and softness of surface are due to glaciation in the 
north, and to some geological dislocations in the Ukraine, 
that is, the south-western region which lies north of the 
Black Sea and the Sea of Azof. 

Only the part of Russia in the far north which adjoins 
Finland was affected by the last invasion of the Ice Sheet 
(see Fig. i), but a considerable region of the north-west 
was covered by its second extension. The line of glacial 
heights south of the Baltic is continued in a great curve 
to the White Sea, and near this line are some of the chief 
elevations of the plain, the Valdai Hills reaching a little 
over 1000 feet above the sea. This line also marks out 
broadly the water-parting between the rivers flowing on 
the one hand to the Baltic Sea, and on the other hand to 
the Black and Caspian Seas. 

The Baltic rivers are therefore relatively short ; the 
Niemen and Dvina (Diina) are the chief, and the Neva, 
which drains Lake Ladoga to the head of the Gulf of 
Finland, is the river on whose marshy banks Petrograd 
(St. Petersburg) was built. 

This part of the country clearly shows the eff'ect of 
the ice. There are many large and small lakes ; others 
are partly drained and form swamps, while marshy 
ground is very extensive. The surface is irregular with 
gravel and morainic blocks mingled with the clay which 
for ins much of the ground. 



212 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

On the south-eastern side of the line, conditions are 
very different. The rivers are much longer ; the 
Dnieper flows to the Black Sea, the Don to the Sea of 
Azof, and the Volga to the Caspian Sea. The Volga 
drains a great part of central and eastern Russia, and is 
the longest river in Europe, but its value as a waterway 
is much lessened by the fact that it flows to an inland sea. 
The trade of Astrakhan, at the mouth of the river, is 
largely that carried on between Russia and the Asiatic 
lands across the Caspian Sea. Because of the flatness of 
the land there is an exceedingly small slope in the river's 
course ; it has therefore little power to cut a valley, it 
winds very much and can scarcely drag along its burden of 
sand and mud ; consequently this is dropped at particular 
points and forms shoals and sandbanks which hinder 
navigation, and before entering the Caspian Sea the river 
divides into a number of more or less parallel channels. 

The Don and its tributary the Donetz flow to the 
Sea of Azof, which communicates with the Black Sea by 
a strait with a channel navigable for vessels of moderate 
size. The Dnieper and its tributary the Pripet flow 
directly to the Black Sea, and parallel with the greater 
part of the Dnieper is the Bug. On the northern shore 
of the Sea of Azof are several ports of medium size, the 
largest of which is Rostof-on-Don, but these have less 
trade than the ports on the more open Black Sea at or 
near the mouth of the Dnieper. 

Much of the basin of the Pripet is an enormous 
marsh, the site of a great lake when the ice-edge lay to the 
north. Most of the region of central Russia which was 
covered by the ice-sheet only in its furthest extent (see 
Fig. i), has recovered from the interruptions of the 
drainage (as was explained in the section on Central 
Europe), and the surface has been levelled and covered 
with a sandy soil of fair fertility. 



EASTERN EUROPE 213 

Still further south is the country never covered by ice, 
but near enough to it to receive from the rivers fine 
clay particles, and from the strong winds which blew 
southward the still finer dust which forms the loess 
soil. This is the *' Black Earth Region " where the 
natural richness of clay and loess has been increased by 
dark-coloured accumulations of vegetable material from 
the natural grasses which grew up and died down each 
year through many centuries before man interfered. 

In the countr}'^ bordering the north shore of the Black 
Sea and the north and east shores of the Sea of Azof the 
loess deposits give place to a brown soil, not quite so 
rich as the black earth, and as the climate is drier this is 
naturally a poorer grassland, and is known as the " Steppe 
Zone." 

Further east is the low region (below sea-level) north 
of the Caspian Sea, over which this great salt lake once 
extended ; even apart from the dryness of the climate, 
this is very poor land, for the retreat of the water has left 
some regions still swamps and others covered with a salt 
soil on which nothing will grow. 

The far north-east of the Russian plain is a glaciated 
region now drained northward by the Northern Dvina to 
the White Sea, and by the Petchora to the Arctic Sea. 
Much of this is marshy or liable to flood, especially the 
coastal districts. 

The effects of glaciation have been pointed out ; it is 
now necessary to consider the effects of geological dis- 
locations in the Ukraine. Here there is a great mass of 
old, hard rock similar to the upstanding blocks of Central 
Europe, but it has been uplifted to a less height, so that it 
does not appear clearly on the map, yet its presence is 
shown in a number of ways. The last uplifts were even 
later than the Ice Age, and the rivers have not been able 
to cut down their valleys smoothly, so that rapids appear. 



214 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

This is most marked in the case of the Dnieper, so 
that its course below Ekaterinoslav, in the southward- 
flowing part of the river, is obstructed by rapids and is 
unhavigable ; hence, although there are many boats 
carrying goods on the part above Ekaterinoslav, and many 
others on the lower course, there is no connection between 
the two systems. 

The Dnieper in its obstructed portion flows through a 
deep and narrow valley, and so do the Bug and the Dniester 
further west, where they also cut through the Ukrainian 
plateau-country. The Ukraine therefore has more relief 
and more diversified scenery than the Russian plains. 

Above Ekaterinoslav the Dnieper has a high right 
(west) bank and a low left (east) bank, the former called 
the hill bank and the latter the meadow bank. So, too, 
have the low^er Don and the Volga above its long and 
narrow delta. Because of the liability of the meadow 
bank to floods, the towns are built on the hill-bank, e.g. 
Kiev on the Dnieper and Saratov on the Volga. 

A most important effect of the block-structure is upon 
mineral deposits. In the great curve of the Dnieper 
where it breaks through the block, and the corresponding 
country further east in the angle between the Donetz and 
the lower Don, are the greatest coal and iron deposits 
of Eastern Europe. The Russian plain is almost without 
minerals, the chief exception being a small coalfield near 
Tula south of Moscow. 

The Ural Mountains are another block, raised to a 
much greater height than the Ukrainian block and spread- 
ing out broadly in the south. In the central region near 
Perm, coal and iron are found, and nearly all the world's 
supply of platinum has come from this district ; copper 
and gold are widely distributed in the Ural region except 
in the northern part. 

The Crimean and Caucasus Mountains are of the 



EASTERN EUROPE 215 

folded type : they were continuous with the Balkans, but 
a great subsidence caused the break between the Balkans 
and the Crimea, while a lesser fracture made the strait 
of Kerch. Quite recent faults in the Caucasus allowed 
volcanic material to be poured out on top of the highlands, 
so that the great volcanic cone of Elbruz reaches a height 
of 18,000 feet, and the similar cone of Kazbek, although 
lower, is nevertheless higher than Mont Blanc. 

The Caucasus Mountains are like the Alps in many 
ways ; they have forests and upland pastures with fertile 
valleys ; but they also have varied and extensive mineral 
deposits, and they resemble the Carpathians inasmuch as 
on their margins there are valuable oil-wells, notably on 
the northern side and in the peninsula where the mountain 
range projects into the Caspian Sea near ^aku. 

Climates and Vegetation Regions. — The temperature 
curve for Moscow in Fig. 3 shows the '' continental " 
features of a long, cold winter and a fairly warm but short 
summer. It cannot represent, however, the whole of this 
vast region. In the summer the heat increases towards 
the south ; in the winter the cold increases towards the 
east, i.e. further from the influence of the mild Atlantic 
winds. Consequently the north-east is much colder than 
Moscow and has a very severe and long winter and a short 
and only moderately warm summer, while the Ukraine is 
warmer than Moscow with a relatively mild and short 
winter and a longer and hotter summer. 

As regards rainfall, Moscow may again be taken as a 
standard of comparison ; it has on the whole a light rain- 
fall which comes mostly in the summer (see Fig. 4). 
This amount decreases towards the east, and the lack is 
especially felt in the south, for the greater heat of summer 
evaporates the water so rapidly that the country is dry 
soon after the rain has ceased. The south-east is therefore 



3i6 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

parched, and the region round the Caspian Sea is almost 
a desert. 

In the winter the cold causes snow instead of rain ; 
this lies on the ground till spring, and then melts so quickly 
that although the rivers become rushing torrents for a 
little while, they cannot carry off all the water and the 
land is flooded. 

This hindrance to navigation follows the long period 
during which the rivers are frozen over. At Archangel 
the freezing lasts for about six months, at Moscow about 
five months, and in the Ukraine about three months. 
Hence, in a country where roads are bad, these various 
interruptions to river traffic are serious. Because of the 
warm waters passing round the Scandinavian peninsula, 
the Lappland coast is free of ice even in the winter, and 
therefore the port of Murmansk has been constructed here 
and connected by a long railway with the central part of 
the country. 

The combined effects of soil and climate cause great 
differences in the vegetation. From this point of view 
Eastern Europe (excluding the bordering mountains) 
may be divided into the following regions : — 

(i) In the far north is the tundra like that described 
in the section on Northern Europe. 

(ii) South of this as far as a line from Lake Ladoga 
to the Southern Urals, i.e, nearly as far as the upper course 
of the Volga, is the region of coniferous forest, little 
cleared, yielding some rye and oats, and with a very scanty 
population, except in the mineral-producing districts 
near the Ural Mountains. 

(iii) South-west of this, including the glaciated area 
in the west and a little non-glaciated area near the middle 
Volga, is the region of deciduous forest, now considerably 
cleared except in the Pripet Marsh region where it is 
still almost untouched. In this not very fertile area, 



THE EAST BALTIC STATES 217 

the growing of rye and oats, less wheat and barley, and 
also flax and hemp, together with pastoral work, are the 
main occupations of a rather scanty population, if the few 
large towns are excepted. 

(iv) The Black Earth Zone from the Ukraine to the 
middle Volga was a grass-land, but has now been taken 
into cultivation and is very productive. Here great 
amounts of wheat, barley, and maize are produced ; 
animals of all kinds and poultry are kept. Consequently, 
apart from the towns, there is a fairly dense agricultural 
population. With its mineral resources in addition this 
is the most important region of Eastern Europe. 

(v) South-east of this, the Steppe-land Zone is only 
in part utiHsed for agriculture. It is still in the poorer 
districts a grass-land, covered with snow in winter, but 
with a rapid growth of grasses and a brilliant blossoming 
of flowers in the spring. In the heat of summer the 
grasses wither and die down, other plants have only bulbs 
or roots remaining in the ground, and the country looks 
bare and parched. Here pastoral work is carried on, 
but not many people can get a living. This type of 
country extends to the wooded foothills of the Crimea 
and Caucasus. 

(vi) Around the Caspian Sea are the salt-steppes and 
salt-marshes, with very little vegetation and very little 
Ufe. 

THE EAST BALTIC STATES 

(EsTHONiA, Latvia, and Lithuania) 

These three states were formed in 1918 after the 
break-up of the Russian Empire, but they began their 
existence in so troubled a way that three years later their 
boundaries were not fixed, and consequently their area 
and population were not known at all accurately. Their 



2i8 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

total area is larger than that of England and Wales, but 
their combined population is small, about six millions. 

The Ests or Esths are of the same race as the Finns, 
and are like them in appearance and customs, and their 
language is like the Finnish language. The Letts or 
Latvis of Latvia (sometimes called Lettland) must be 
grouped with the Lithuanians ; they are both of the 
Northern race, but form quite a distinct branch from that 
of the Germans and Scandinavians. Their languages are 
unlike any others of Europe, but are somewhat like each 
other. Though in regard to race the northern of the 
three states stands apart from the remaining two, yet in 
their recent history Esthonia and Latvia have gone 
together while Lithuania has a different story. 

Many centuries ago the Ests and Letts were conquered 
by the " Teutonic Knights " from Germany, whose 
descendants, known as Baits, have until quite lately been 
the nobles and landowners, even after Russia obtained 
the countr}^ in the eighteenth century. The " Baltic 
Barons " of Esthonia and Latvia were the educated people, 
who owned the land, built the towns, and made the 
country like an outpost of Germany ; the Ests and Letts 
were ignorant peasants and hated the Baits. An old Lett 
folk-song * shows the feeling of the Letts towards the 
Baits, and suggests the condition of their chimney-less 
cottages of a hundred years ago. 

** Oh, poor German guest ! 
What wouldst thou in our wretched hut ? 
Thou canst not stay in the yard, 
For in the yard is wind and rain. 
Thou canst not stay within, 
For within is smoke. 
Listen ! I will advise thee ! 
Go to the bottom-most place of Hell, 
Where the Devil makes his fire. 
No rain there, German ! No smoke there ! " 

* Quoted from " The New Eastern Europe," by Ralph Butler. 



THE EAST BALTIC STATES 



219 



After Esthonia and Latvia were absorbed into the 
Russian Empire, the new masters tried to make the 




9. Peoples of Eastern Europe. 



Emery Walker Ltd. sc 



country Russian, but did not succeed. Perhaps the 
greatest change was that some of the Ests and Letts were 



220 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

helped to buy small areas of land from the Baltic Barons. 
Yet most of the natives were landless, and one great 
reason for their demand for independence was their 
desire to own the lands on which they worked ; the land 
will now belong either to the peasants who cultivate it 
or to the state as a whole. 

Lithuania was conquered by Poland, and consequently 
Polish nobles were the owners of the land ; then Russia 
obtained Lithuania as part of Poland, and when the Polish 
nobles attempted to rebel against the Russian Government 
the whole country suffered. In Lithuania, as in Esthonia 
and Latvia, and indeed in all the east of Europe, the 
peasants have a great " land hunger," for such land as 
under Russian rule they obtained from the Polish land- 
owners was not sufficient for their needs, and many of 
them were forced to emigrate. 

The land of these three states is not on the whole 
fertile ; a considerable proportion of it is still covered 
with forest, and the surface of the remainder is partly 
covered by lakes, marshes, or peat-bogs, partly sandy and 
partly clay. The latter is naturally the best, and where 
the marshes have been drained good crops of hay and 
grain can be obtained. Rye is ever)rwhere the chief crop, 
oats and barley coming next. Potatoes have been widely 
grown, but not only for food : alcohol has been distilled 
from them. Flax is another important crop grown 
partly for the fibre for linen and partly for the seed. The 
farming includes also the keeping of all kinds of animals. 

There is a marked difference in the agriculture of 
Esthonia and Latvia on the one hand, and of Lithuania 
on the other. The Baltic barons carried on the work with 
German thoroughness, and on the whole made the best 
of the natural conditions, while the Polish landowners 
were careless and wasteful farmers. Consequently the 
peasants differ, for they learned from their masters, but 



THE EAST BALTIC STATES 221 

the fact that the land is now their own will encourage all 
of them to improve their methods. 

The forests are cut for timber, of which much is 
exported, and fishing is another important resource of 
these countries. Minerals are almost entirely lacking, 
and manufactures are very little developed, the only ones 
of any note being the making of food products such as 
alcohol and beer, flour, and linseed oil. A little cotton 
and linen manufacture and some engineering are carried 
on at Riga and other ports. 

The position of these countries between central 
Russia and the Baltic Sea is of great importance. Riga, 
the capital of Latvia, owes its growth to the fact that it 
was one of the chief ports of Russia ; its exports of 
timber, flax, and bacon came from the interior, and the 
local trade of Latvia was very small. Though the water 
is frozen for three months, ice-breakers were used which 
usually kept a channel free, and this gave it a great 
advantage over Petrograd in the winter. Before the war 
Riga had a population of over half a million ; but by 
1 92 1 this had fallen to a little less than half that number. 

Similarly Reval, the capital of Esthonia, was a Russian 
port, although ice-blocked for longer than Riga ; it had 
less traffic and is a smaller city. Latvia has a much more 
westerly port in Libau, which is practically always open, 
and dealt particularly with exports of grain. Lithuania is 
unfortunate in having no port, but it is expected that 
Memel taken from Germany will be allotted to the new 
state. 

Russia, therefore, had a great incentive to retain 
these states, as they form such an important gateway. 
Moreover, when the Russian power collapsed, Poland 
wished to possess Lithuania once more, while the Baltic 
barons managed to get a German army in Latvia and 
Esthonia. There was, therefore, a struggle between 



222 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the native peasants on the one hand and Poles and Germans 
on the other, while the Bolshevik rulers of Russia also 
occupied much of the land. Thus the people of these 
countries had to fight a threefold enemy before they 
gained their independence, and they began their history 
heavily handicapped ; their future will depend upon their 
ability to work the land successfully and upon arrange- 
ments being made with Russia to continue the trade 
between that country and the western world through 
their ports. 

THE UKRAINE 

The region included under the name of Ukraine has 
not up till now been at all definite. The word Ukraine 
means Borderland : it was applied to the region south of 
the early Russian state and on the edge of the great steppe 
lands which extended from Asia into Europe. These 
steppe lands were the home of the wandering shepherds 
and herdsmen who, mounted on horses, not only accom- 
panied their flocks and herds, but also as warriors from 
time to time overran the settled lands of south-eastern 
Europe. 

The original Ukrainians, or Little Russians, long ago 
formed part of the same state as the Great Russians, the 
capital of this old state being at Kiev on the Dnieper, at 
that time just within the forest belt. Gradually the 
southern forest dwellers spread out into the black earth 
region, where the fertile open country offered them a 
better living than did the forest clearings. Here the 
Ukrainians settled, but their position in this border-land 
was dangerous, inasmuch as they were exposed to the 
invasions of the steppe peoples, particularly the Tatars. 
To protect themselves against these enemies, the tribes 
of the lower Dnieper region organised themselves into 



THE UKRAINE 223 

warrior bands, and called themselves Cossacks, but these 
were different from the more eastern Cossacks of the 
Don and Volga Basins, who joined the Empire of the 
Great Russians. 

The Ukrainians sometimes pressed forward over the 
open country, sometimes were driven by the nomads 
back into the forests. For a time they were under the 
Polish power, and at last were absorbed in the growing 
Russian Empire. Between the horsemen of the steppes 
and the soldiers of the greater northern powers, they have 
been harried and their development has been prevented, 
but they have kept their nationality and even under 
Russian rule have preserved their own language, customs, 
and manner of life. 

There has, therefore, never been a definite and 
independent state of the Ukraine until quite recently, 
although the Ukrainians have gradually spread over all 
the black earth region and much of the steppe lands, 
even as far as the Caucasus mountains and far into 
Siberia. After the collapse of the Russian power in the 
Great War, a Ukrainian National Council was formed 
which in November, 1917, proclaimed that the new state 
should consist of nine of the provinces of south-western 
Russia (excluding the Crimean Peninsula), in which the 
great majority of the people are Ukrainians. 

The area of this region is about that of Great Britain, 
and its population is about 35 millions, of whom four- 
fifths are Ukrainians, the remainder consisting mainly 
of Great Russians and Jews. There are probably as 
many, or even more, Ukrainians left outside this region 
as there are non-Ukrainians included within it, but the 
greater part of the Ukrainians outside the Ukraine are 
not in Russia ; they are in Rumania or Poland, or have 
migrated to America. 

The Ukrainians are easily to be distinguished from 



224 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the Great Russians. The languages of the two peoples 
are so different that they cannot understand one another, 
in spite of the fact that for many years the Russian 
Government would allow no other language than Russian 
to be used in the schools, churches, and law courts of 
the Ukraine, and forbade the printing or sale of any book 
or paper in the Ukrainian language. This language is 
said to be more like that of the Serbs and Croats than that 
of the Russians, and certainly in physical characteristics 
and appearance the Ukrainians seem more akin to the 
Jugo- Slavs than to the Great Russians. 

In customs, too, there are marked differences. The 
holding of land by the members of the village in common 
which was forced upon the peasants by the Russian 
Government was hated by the Ukrainians, who are more 
independent than the Russian peasants, and desire to 
own their own pieces of ground and cultivate them in their 
own way. They are not naturally communists, in the 
same way that the Russians are communists, though the 
farmers trade through local co-operative societies which 
are themselves combined into large unions. 

In the Ukrainian villages of the open treeless country 
the peasants' huts are largely built of clay, thatched with 
straw, while those of the Russians are of wood ; the 
Ukrainians pride themselves on the fact that their homes 
are much cleaner than those of the Russians, and that 
each of them is surrounded by an orchard, and not built 
into one long street in the Russian fashion. Where 
Ukrainians and Russians live in the same district their 
villages are built on a different plan, and are quite 
separate from one another. Yet the Ukrainians, even if 
superior to the Russians in cleanliness, would be con- 
sidered by people of Western Europe to be living in very 
unhealthy conditions, and diseases such as typhoid fever, 
diphtheria, and malaria are prevalent. Their education, 



THE UKRAINE 225 

too, is very poor indeed, as must be the case after the 
Russian attempt to destroy their language. In almost 
every way, the Ukrainian peasants have yet to learn how 
to live finer lives, and this they will do, for they have 
many good qualities. For example, though very few of 
them can read or write, they have a wealth of unwritten 
proverbs, parables, and poems ; songs known to all are 
constantly sung : New Year songs, poems for spring and 
harvest, hymns of worship, long poems of their past 
struggles against their oppressors, and of the lives of their 
national heroes. 

The loss of the Ukraine was the most important of 
those which followed the break-up of the Russian Empire ; 
not only because of the population of 35 million people, 
but also because this country formed the most pro- 
ductive portion of that huge Empire. It included the 
western and better-watered parts of the black earth and 
steppe regions, which were the great grain-fields producing 
mainly wheat, and to a less extent, barley, maize, oats and 
rye. From this part came the wheat exported to Britain 
and other countries of Western Europe, but it is very 
doubtful if this tribute of grain will continue, even after 
the country has settled down again to peaceful pro- 
duction. For here, as in Rumania, the export came from 
the estates of the great nobles while the peasants who had 
insufficient amounts of land were frequently wanting food. 
Now that the nobles have disappeared, the peasants 
among whom their estates have been parcelled will pro- 
bably grow food for their own use. The production, more- 
over, will probably be less, for the uneducated peasants 
have, as a rule, the most primitive methods and imple- 
ments in their agriculture. In the east, grain is less im- 
portant, but beet is grown for sugar, and potatoes are 
grown partly as food and partly for alcohol. In the 
northern part, especially in the Kiev district, tobacco is 

Q 



226 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

obtained, and will probably become more important as 
trading facilities are improved. The love of the Ukrainian 
peasants for orchards has led to a widespread production 
of fruit, although the region is naturally of the grass- 
land and not of the tree-land type. Pastoral work is 
carried on everywhere in close connection with the 
agriculture ; every farmer has some live-stock, and cattle 
and pigs are taking the place of sheep now that the land 
has become cut up and more fully used. 

The mineral wealth of the country is very important. 
The Donetz coalfield is remarkable because its coal is 
largely anthracite, the most valuable form ; the eastern 
part is beyond the limits of the Ukraine. The great 
iron-field is at Krivoy-Rog, halfway between Ekaterino- 
slav on the Dnieper and the port of Nikolaiev. Salt 
exists in large amounts in the Ekaterinoslav region. The 
coal and iron deposits rank with those of Central and 
Western Europe, and mining and manufacturing on a 
large scale will develop. The beginnings were there 
before the Great War, for British, French, Belgian, 
and German business men had invested their capital and 
organised an industry, supplying skilled foremen and 
obtaining unskilled labour from the peasants who found 
difficulty in getting a living on the land. So the industries 
began, and the production of agricultural machinery and 
iron and steel work for buildings and railways reached 
some importance, but the conditions of labour were very 
bad, for therewas no effective supervision by the govern- 
ment such as has gradually developed in Britain during 
a hundred years of factory laws. There were also 
industries of sugar-refining, tobacco manufacture, leather- 
working, and flour-milling. 

Trade has been greatly hampered by the lack of good 
roads and the inadequate arrangement and management 
of the railways. But the Ukraine has the best ports of 



THE UKRAINE 227 

Eastern Europe. Odessa, away from river mouths, has 
the advantage of being usually open in the winter ; 
Nikolaiev has a deep channel in the river Bug ; Kherson 
is on the chief river, the Dnieper, but there is a difficulty 
in keeping a good channel up to the town ; these three 
ports share between them most of the trade of the 
Ukraine. Kharkov is an inland trading centre, where 
great fairs are held at which traders from all parts of the 
Ukraine and southern Russia sell and exchange their 
wares. At Kiev, a similar fair is held once a year, but 
the town has more importance as a centre of railway 
and river traffic, and as the capital of the Ukraine. It has 
a population of about 500,000 persons. 

The trading classes in the towns are either Russians, 
Jews, or Poles ; in pre-war times only about one-quarter 
of the people in Kiev were Ukrainians. 

Because of the earlier conquest of the Ukraine by 
Poland and its later conquest by Russia, the landowners 
were, until the Great War, either Poles or Russians. 
Hence, after the Ukrainian peasants had seized the 
opportunity given by the break-up of the Russian Empire 
to turn out the foreign nobles, both Poland and also the 
leaders who tried to get power in Russia attempted to 
regain the Ukraine. The country was fought over by 
armies and ravaged by bands of brigands, while the 
peasants endeavoured to keep possession of the lands 
and cattle, hiding their grain and goods from the invaders. 

The future of the country is very uncertain ; it seems 
probable that Poland will retain East GaHcia, even though 
it is inhabited by a majority of Ukrainians (there called 
Ruthenians), and the most hopeful solution of the con- 
ffict between the Ukraine and Russia would be an alliance 
which would allow that close co-operation between these 
two countries which is demanded by their geographical 
situation and resources. 



228 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

RUSSIA . 

The development of Russia came much later than 
that of the nations of Central and Western Europe. As 
was stated in the section on the Peoples of Europe, the 
Great Russians (who form the bulk of the population of 
the present state of Russia in Europe) long ago migrated 
into the forests of the upper basin of the Volga River. 
The Russian power began in the state which had its 
capital at Kiev, but developed in its present form at a 
later date in the state of Muscovy, situated just within 
the forest belt around the town of Moscow. The rulers 
of Muscovy gradually extended their dominions outwards 
in all directions, and as the conquest proceeded so 
Russians settled among the peoples of the new lands ; 
hence, on the outskirts of Russia in Europe, as well as in 
Siberia, there is a mixed population. 

The first great movement was eastward through the 
Siberian forests, where Russian adventurers sought furs 
from the forest animals and ivory from the walrus of the 
northern coasts ; they conquered the land in their advance 
and even reached the Pacific Ocean. The monarch 
who increased the power of Russia most markedly was 
Peter the Great. He brought the country into touch 
with the more civilised states of Europe, extended his rule 
to the Baltic Sea, and in 1703 built Petrograd in the 
marshes by the broad river Neva, having whole forests 
cut down and used as piles to form a foundation ; the 
city was nobly planned and has splendid public buildings. 

He also reached the sea in the south by capturing 
Azof. To hold the Black Sea coasts meant, however, 
the subjection of the Asiatic or half-Asiatic tribes of 
the steppe lands, for Tatars had invaded this region in the 
thirteenth century, others such as the Kalmuck and the 
Kirghiz came later, and these peoples carried on repeated 



RUSSIA 229 

warfare with the Russians. The steppe land dwellers 
organised themselves into " Cossack bands " of horsemen, 
who fought against all the surrounding peoples, and not 
until they were suppressed or joined the armies of the 
Russians did the southern land and the Black Sea coasts 
become open to Russian colonisation ; the region was 
effectively settled only in the nineteenth century. 

Thus before the Great War the Russian Empire 
included all Eastern Europe and Northern Asia, a total 
area of over eight million square miles, with a population 
of about 170 million people. The break-up of the 
Empire during the war caused the loss of great areas, and 
it is impossible to say what regions, especially in Asia and 
the Trans- Caucasus, will remain under the new govern- 
ment. If the European region alone is considered, and 
Poland, the East Baltic States, Finland, Bessarabia, and 
the Ukraine excluded, the area of the new state would be 
about 1,600,000 square miles (thirteen times the size of 
the British Isles), and the population would be between 
70 and 80 millions. 

The Russian Emperor or Tsar was an autocrat, ruling 
of his own will, and assisted in the government by any 
people he chose. Under him were a multitude of 
governors, councillors, officials, and police, who were 
frequently corrupt and used their position not to carry 
out the laws justly, but to gain their own advantage. 
Hence the people were oppressed, and yet for the most 
part accepted this state of things, partly because they had 
never known a better one, partly because they are 
naturally submissive, and almost entirely uneducated. 
Most of the peasants lived in their small villages, largely 
isolated from the rest of the world, trading but little and 
very seldom meeting any but their neighbours. They 
knew only the noble who was the great landow^ner of his 
district, his servants, the local officials and police, and 



230 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

the village priest, and from none of these came to them 
education or a movement for improvement in any way. 

In the towns a middle class grew up because of the 
industries, the trade, and the various professions which 
were carried on there, and from this middle class arose 
educated people who demanded reform and tried to 
spread their ideas among the poorer workmen and the 
peasants. Such attempts were met by the government 
with floggings, imprisonment, and exile to Siberia, but 
the seeds of rebellion fell upon ground prepared by dis- 
content both in town and country. The rising industries 
in the towns of Russia, like those of Poland, were carried 
on under miserable conditions, and in the country was a 
great land-hunger. Up till 1861 all the land, except 
that belonging to the Crown or the Church, was in the 
hands of the nobles, and the people were merely serfs, 
but at that date serfdom was abolished, and a part of the 
nobles' land was allotted to the peasants, on a gradual- 
payment system. The land was not, however, to be 
owned by individuals, but by village communities, or 
mirs, and the mirs divided it among the famiHes for their 
use for a period of three years. At the end of each period 
of three years the land was re-distributed again among 
the people. This mir system had two great defects : as 
the land was used by each family only for a short time 
there was no incentive to improve it or even keep it in 
good condition, and so it got into a bad state and yielded 
poorly ; secondly, as the population increased the shares 
got smaller and smaller, and the people could not get 
sufficient food. Thus the land-hunger became acute, and 
peasants and factory workers joined in a revolution which 
broke out in 1905. This was put down, but the Tsar 
decreed two reforms : a Duma or Parliament was set up 
and given certain limited powers, and a new land system 
was begun. 



RUSSIA 231 

In the Great War the conditions of the people, both 
at the front and at home, became most wretched ; the 
corrupt government was quite incapable of feeding and 
supplying the armies and of keeping up the industries 
and transport of the country itself. In 1917 the soldiers 
revolted, and the old government fell ; for a few months 
the leaders of the Duma tried to establish a new one, but 
they failed, and a small number of soldiers and extreme 
Socialists or Communists, called Bolsheviks, seized the 
power by violence, and set up a different form of govern- 
ment. The movement was most active among the 
soldiers and the town workers, but the peasants were glad 
to get rid of the nobles and divided up the lands among 
themselves. 

The Bolshevik government obtained a firm hold on 
central Russia, with their headquarters in Petrograd and 
Moscow, and made peace with the Central Powers. They 
were attacked, however, by men who desired their over- 
throw, and who for that purpose gained adherents in the 
border lands, such as Siberia and South Russia, invaded 
the central region with help from foreign states who 
objected to the Bolsheviks, yet were all in turn defeated. 
Also, long after the Great War was over, the western 
powers maintained a blockade of Bolshevik Russia, and 
did not permit trade with it. 

Thus a succession of calamities overwhelmed the 
country and brought it to the verge of barbarism and 
savagery. An account of it which was true in 191 3 
would be quite inapplicable to the post-war conditions. 
Much of its industrial life practically disappeared ; the 
railway communications within the country broke down ; 
com.merce ceased. When in the spring of 1920 the 
western powers removed the blockade, very little trade 
took place : almost the only imports in the remaining 
part of that year were a small quantity of agricultural 



232 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

implements and potatoes for the starving population of the 
great towns ; in the same period the exports consisted 
mainly of some cardboard and plywood. 

It is necessary, however, to distinguish clearly between 
the country and the towns. In the former the dislocation 
and loss was greatest in the border regions fought over 
by the contending armies, and plundered by soldiers 
who, when their side was defeated, scattered and fled 
almost aimlessly in country far from their homes. 

The central region was less injured, and some of the 
peasants were better off than before, because of their 
greater share of land ; the breakdown of traffic and trade 
affected them little, for they were almost self-supporting 
even in normal times. 

In the towns it was far otherwise, for the means of 
livelihood were reduced or destroyed, and few of the 
people had money or goods with which to buy food from 
the peasants. The Bolshevik government believed in 
the state owning all the factories, railways, and land, and 
managing all the production and trade. They therefore 
tried to supply the needs of the town populations by 
getting food to some small extent from abroad, but mainly 
from the peasants. Although they believed that land 
should only be held by the community, they found it 
impossible even to try to interfere with the peasants' 
possession, and limited themselves to obtaining part of the 
produce. The peasants resented this, there were some- 
times conflicts between them and the Bolshevik guards, 
and the food supply which reached the towns was quite 
insufficient. Similarly, although the government tried 
to organise the production of clothing and other necessa- 
ries, raw material and coal were lacking, and people went 
half clad and could not heat their houses in the bitterly 
cold and long winters. Disease and death were the 
consequence, and the population of the towns decreased 



RUSSIA 233 

greatly. Before the war Petrograd had a population of 
over 2 J million ; in 192 1 it was estimated that it had 
fallen to about one-quarter of that number, Moscow 
before the war had nearly two million people ; it was 
reduced to about one million by 1921. Petrograd was 
an artificial creation of the Russian Tsars ; it therefore 
suffered more than Moscow, which was not only the old 
capital, but the natural centre of the country and the 
seat of the Bolshevik government. Other centres of 
industry and commerce, which suffered similarly, are 
Tula, an iron and steel manufacturing town near the small 
central coal deposits, Perm, the centre of the eastern 
mining region, and the large trading towns on the Volga : 
Kazan, Samara, and Saratov. 

In the area between the Black and Caspian Seas, so 
far from the region of Moscow in which the power of 
the government was centred, and with such a large 
admixture of non-Russian peoples in its population, 
various republics were set up ; the two across the 
Caucasus, Georgia in the west and Azerbaijan in the east, 
are most likely to remain as independent states. 

The new Russian government is so different from the 
British system that some account of it must be given. In 
the first place the Bolsheviks founded their rule on violence 
and maintain it by force : they believe that the whole 
system of carrying on industry by private individuals for 
their own profit is wrong, but they realise that few of the 
people share this opinion, and they therefore think it 
necessary to force their system on the country until such 
time as the mass of the people come to accept it volun- 
tarily. They stamp out opposition ruthlessly, and at the 
same time try to teach the people, and especially the 
children in the schools, their doctrines. 

The second feature of the method of government is 
not of necessity bound up with the Bolshevik rule : it 



234 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

may persist even if the Bolsheviks are driven from power. 
It is the system of governing by means of various Soviets, 
i.e. Councils, and is therefore called the Soviet system. 
In Britain the members of Parliament are each elected 
for some particular district in which each person votes 
for the candidate whom he prefers ; thus the method is 
one of direct voting, and the group of voters is simply 
a local or geographical one. Now the Soviet method is 
different. The group of voters is not always a geo- 
graphical one ; for example, the people working in a 
particular industry may vote together so that the group is 
an industrial one ; again, where people of different races 
live in the same region, each racial group votes together. 
Also, whereas in Britain as a rule a man has only one vote, 
in Russia he may have several : he may vote with his 
racial group, again with his industrial group, and again 
with a local group of all the residents in his district. 

Secondly, he does not vote directly for a member of 
the Russian Committee which corresponds with the 
British Parliament. In each group he votes every week 
for a member of a Soviet for his district ; thus in his 
industrial group he votes for a member who will represent 
his views in regard to his work, and in his racial group 
he votes for another to see that his own people are 
properly treated. Hence, a large town has delegates from 
the various industrial, local, and racial groups, and these 
together form the combined Town Soviet. Then each 
Town Soviet, and similarly each Village Soviet or Country 
District Soviet, elects a delegate to the All-Russian 
Congress of Soviets which meets at Moscow and is re- 
elected every six months ; this in its turn elects the 
Central Executive Committee. The Central Executive 
Committee corresponds with our Parliament, and appoints 
the actual members of the government who are called the 
Commissaries of the People. 



RUSSIA 235 

In theory every one may vote, and in theory if any 
delegate to the Town Soviet does not please the people 
who voted for him he can be replaced by another next 
week, and similarly any delegate to the All-Russian 
Congress or even any member of the Central Executive 
Committee can be removed in six months. But under 
the Bolsheviks only a proportion of the people are allowed 
to vote, and the government is in the hands of a few men. 
Moreover, whatever government may be in power, it can 
be really democratic only when the people are sufficiently 
educated to understand the problems, to choose men able 
to represent their views, and to see that the actual working- 
out of the laws is in accordance with their wishes ; as yet 
even fewer of the Russians than of the other peoples of 
Europe have reached this stage of development. 

Nevertheless, the Russian people have played, and 
will again play, an important part in the life of Europe, 
not only because they provide such goods as grain, eggs, 
dairy produce, timber, flax, leather, oil, and platinum, 
but also because they can give ideas which are not so 
commonly found among the western nations. This is 
because they look at life so differently from the western 
Europeans. 

As a nation they are not so interested in what may be 
called material comforts and conveniences, and make little 
eflfort to get them, but live in the simple way their more 
advanced neighbours did two hundred years ago. It is 
perhaps this lack of interest in mechanical contrivances 
that makes them such unsatisfactory workers at all sorts 
of mechanical processes. It is said that a Russian has 
only to look at a machine for it to go wrong, and though, 
of course, this is an absurd exaggeration, it is certainly 
true that a traveller in the most distant and un-European 
parts of Russia will find an EngHshman or German in 
charge of the machinery at mines or managing a factory. 



236 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

But the time and energy which western Europeans 
spend in making life more comfortable, the Russians use 
on what may be called things of the spirit. They are in a 
simple way deeply religious, and they accept as the will 
of God misfortune against which we should struggle. For 
the same reason men and women will suffer untold hard- 
ships to go on a pilgrimage to some holy place, sometimes 
travelling to purify their own souls and sometimes to 
remove some moral stain from their village community. 
It must be remembered that outside the towns the people 
live together in such a close community that they think 
an irreligious man can cast a blight, or a holy man can shed 
virtue, throughout his village. 

Like all simple people, they are credulous and super- 
stitious, and though they are patient in suffering they can 
be horribly cruel when they are roused, so that massacres 
(or " pogroms " as they are called) of Jews and others 
who are supposed for some reason to injure the life of 
the community have been common occurrences. The 
credulity of the Russians also makes it easier for politicians 
to lead them into excesses. 

Their art is very unlike that of western peoples, whom 
it attracts by its strangeness, and various simple forms of 
art are means of expression to the Russians, among whom 
writing is not yet common. Much can be learnt about 
them by studying their pictures, dances, toys, and 
embroideries ; there one finds their love of simple design, 
strong rhythm and bright colour, their disregard for 
accuracy, and a liking for all gay things that cause 
laughter. To the western mind they often appear like 
children, but only a Russian can really understand the 
Russians. 



CONCLUSION 237 



CONCLUSION 

Each of the states having been described in turn, it is 
now possible to consider in a more general manner the 
European group of peoples and to point out how they 
have influenced and still influence each other, and how 
they have extended their influence to all parts of the 
world. 

It has been shown that in the various regions of Europe 
nations have grown up, some of them (particularly in 
the western portions of the continent) favoured by their 
circumstances, while others (particularly in the east) have 
had to contend against unfavourable conditions, and only 
quite recently have begun their development. Where in 
a suitable environment, the people have in themselves 
certain qualities, these qualities have been able to find 
expression and the nation has advanced and also led the 
way for other nations. In the Mediterranean region the 
civilisation of the western world developed. Here, 
among the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, were the 
beginnings of arts and science, and even to-day the 
architecture and statuary of ancient Greece are among 
the treasured possessions of all Europe. Similarly, on 
the laws of Rome have been founded those of many states, 
and till quite recently, the Roman roads, even in Britain, 
were the best means of communication. In the Middle 
Ages the artistic genius of the Italian people found in their 
beautiful land the stimulus to painting, and their easy 
circumstances enabled a school of painters to grow up 
and to hand on their slowly-acquired skill ; this art was 
transmitted to other peoples, and Dutch, French, Spanish, 



238 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

and British schools of painting owed much to the 
Italians.*' 

So in other arts, in scientific knowledge, and in the 
development of democratic government, the various 
nations have made special contributions to the common 
advance ; one may mention, for instance, in music, 
Germany ; in the art of printing, Holland, Germany, and 
Britain ; in literature, Italy, France, Germany, and 
Britain ; in science, Britain, Germany, and France ; in 
the growth of democratic forms of government, Switzer- 
land and Britain ; in co-operation in industry, Denmark ; 
in industrial developments, Britain and Germany ; in 
education, Switzerland, Germany, and Britain. 

Moreover, nations develop characteristics which give 
them what may almost be called a " personality " ; of this 
France gives an excellent example, for she has a standard 
in taste which has led other peoples to study her ways 
of life. From all parts of the world people go to Paris to 
study in her Schools of Art and her University, to admire 
the wonderful city and its galleries, and to visit the 
theatres and concert-rooms, while the Parisian fashions 
are more often followed than those of any other country. 

It has also been shown how the countries are con- 
nected in their work and trade, so that economic prosperity 
depends upon their co-operation. Barriers between 
nations diminish the common good and conflicts destroy 
it. If the Europe of to-day is considered, it will be found 
that many barriers to trade exist because of national 
jealousies, while there are serious possibilities of further 
conflict. 

The nations still fear one another, and within the 

* As one uses maps for most aspects of geography, so collections 
of pictures and statuary from various countries should be studied in 
public galleries, for in these matters there is no barrier of language 
such as that which hinders a comparative study of literature and 
science. 



CONCLUSION 239 

various states there are minority populations whose 
discontent may be the seed of revolution or warfare. 
The war broke down the great Empires and released 
subject nations, but the new states still contain alien 
peoples, though their numbers are much smaller. On the 
other hand, the feeling of nationality has been intensified, 
and so people are less likely to tolerate government by 
others. 

Moreover, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, 
the war has caused the injury or destruction of the means 
of life for large numbers of people, and poverty and 
disease are common. This is not only a menace to 
political peace, but it makes the work of the people so 
much less efficient that recovery even to the amount of 
prosperity they had before the war must be very slow, and 
all Europe is aifected by their lessened production. 

Under these conditions the more favoured nations, 
including Britain, find it to their own interest to assist 
the war-stricken countries, and it is to the advantage of 
all the states to co-operate in the League of Nations to 
prevent the recurrence of warfare and its attendant 
miseries. 

In addition to their influence upon one another, the 
greater nations of Europe have reached out and affected 
almost all parts of the globe. They have sent out 
emigrants who have peopled most of North America and 
Australasia, they have conquered and partly peopled 
South America and Africa, and they have gained power 
over a considerable part of Asia. No land inhabited by 
man has escaped their influence. 

Explorers discovered lands hitherto unknown to 
Europeans, and usually inhabited by peoples living a 
different kind of life and having different ideas. After 
the explorers, followed traders desirous of getting strange 
or valuable goods, farmers or miners wanting the produce 



240 EUROPE OF TO-DAY 

of the ground, and missionaries anxious to teach the 
natives another religion, to educate them, and show them 
better ways of life. Some of these Europeans had high 
motives, others were selfish and cruel ; some gave help 
to the peoples, others took their lands or even kidnapped 
them and sold them as slaves. Even without intending 
to do so, the Europeans introduced new vices such as 
the drinking of spirits, and new diseases which in some 
cases literally destroyed whole populations. 

Besides these actions of individual Europeans, there 
are the actions of the European states which gradually 
asserted their power over most of the lands of the world, 
so that a few powerful nations of Europe acquired very 
great colonies or possessions. Where the climate of the 
newly found lands suited the life of white people colonies 
were established, and even when these broke away from 
the mother country (as the United States did from 
Britain) the ideas and the ways of living were still like 
those of the parent country. 

Where the climate did not allow white people to live 
easily, there was another motive for the acquisition of the 
lands. The states of Western and Central Europe have 
stores of coal which have encouraged the development of 
manufactures for which raw materials are required, and 
the consequent growth of a large industrial population 
which cannot be fed upon the agricultural produce of the 
country. Tropical regions can supply many raw materials 
and various foods, and with proper development their 
production can be greatly increased. Also the industrial 
regions of Europe require markets in which the manu- 
factured goods can be sold, and the natives of tropical 
regions may become purchasers of these wares. 

It is therefore a temptation to an industrial state to 
annex such regions in order that the trade may be de- 
veloped for its own advantage, and even if the state does 



CONCLUSION 241 

not intend to limit the trade of the region to its own 
manufacturers and merchants, yet it may think it prudent 
to prevent other states doing this, and therefore to 
declare the region a " dependency " or " protectorate." 

Even where no political power was asserted, as in the 
case of China and Japan, the nations of Europe had great 
influences ; for example, they opened up trade relations, 
lent capital and built railways and factories, established or 
assisted schools, and gave examples of government. 
Japan has been a willing pupil and in consequence must 
now be reckoned as one of the great powers of the world, 
and even the ancient civilisations of those slow-moving 
countries of India and China are gradually being changed. 

Because of these relationships and influences, the 
nations of Europe, including Britain, are not only 
responsible to one another, but they are responsible to 
practically all the peoples of the world. 



R 



INDEX 



Aachen, 86 
Aalborg, 39 
Aarhuus, 39 
Abo, 50 

Adige R., 100, 114, 117 
Adige v., 100 
Adria, 175 

Adrianople, 180, 203 
j^gean Sea, 168, 179, 

203 
Agram. See Zagreb 
Aix-la-Chapelle. See 

Aachen 
Alais, 159 
Albania, 200, 204 
Albanian Alps, 179 
Albanian Gate, 179, 

201 
Albanians, 198 
Alderney, 143 
Alexandria, 203 
Aller R., 55 
Alher, 143, 144 
Almeria, 173, 185 
Alpine Foreland, 99, 

147 
Alpine Race, 18, 19 
Alps, 96, 99, 112, 113, 

120 
Alsace, 81, 83, 137, 

156, 159 
Aluta R. See Olt R. 
Amiens, 158 
Amsterdam, 73, 78, 79 
Andalusia, 171, 173, 

175, 186 
Andalusians, 184 
Angles, 60 
Antwerp, 165 
Aosta, 99 



Apennines, 176, 177 
Apulia, 176 
Aragon, 183 
Arc R., 99 
Archangel, 216 
Ardennes, 62, 137, 138 
Arlberg T., 100 
Arno R., 177 
Astrakhan, 212 
Athens, 204 
Austria, 11 3-1 21 
Austria-Hungary, 114, 

116 
Azerbaijan, 233 
Azof Sea, 212, 228 
Azores, 188 

Baden, 87 

Bakony Forest Mts., 

106, 129, 130 
Baku, 215 
Balaton L., 129 
Bale. See Basel 
Balearic I., 186 
Balkan Mts., 181 
Balkan Peninsula, 178- 

182 
Balkan States, 195-210 
Balkans, 168 
Baltic Barons, 218 
Baltic Heights, 52, 94 
Baltic Sea, 42, 43, 70, 

136 
Baltic States, 217-222 
Baits, 218 

Banat, 105, 131-136 
Barcelona, 186 
Barmen, 86 
Basel, 62, 63, no, 112 
Basques, 182 

243 



Bavaria, 87 

Bavarian Plateau, 64, 65 

Belfort Gate, 148, 158 

Belgium 137-138, 161- 
166 

Belgrade, 208 

Bergen, 46 

Berlin, 55, 69, 86 

Bern, 100 

Bernese Oberland, lOO 

Beskides Mts., 103, 104 

Bessarabia, 107, 131- 
136 

Betic Cordillera, 173, 
185 

Bilbao, 185, 186 

Bitolia. See Monastir 

Black Earth Region, 
I 213, 217 
I Black Forest Mts., 63 

Black Sea, 136 

Block Mts., 63 

Bocchetta P., 177, 194 

Bochum, 86 
j Bohemia, 117, 121 
j Bohemian Forest Moun- 
! tains, 65, 126 
i Bohemian Plateau, 65, 
66 

Bologna, 194 

Bolsheviks, 231, 233 

Bonn, 61 

Bordeaux, 145, 157 

Bosna, R., 179 

Bosnia, 116 

Bosphorus, 209 

Bothnia, Gulf, 27 

Bozen, 100, 114 

Brasso, 133 

Bratislava, 122, 127 



244 

Bremen, 85, 87 
Brenner P., 100 
Breslau, 86 
Brest, 142, 150, 157 
Breton Languages, 154 
Brittany, 142, 143, 161 
Brno, 126 
Bruck, 102 
Bruges, 164, 165 
Brlinn. See Brno 
Brussels, 162, 164 
Bucharest, 134, 136 
Budapest, 102, 120, 128 

130 
Bug R., 94, 212, 214, 

227 
Bukovina, 104, 132 
Bulgaria, 200, 208 
Bulgarians, 21, 22, 133, 

198, 206 
Burgas, 209 

Cadiz, 186 
Calabria, 175, 177 
Camargue, 149 
Cambrai, 158 
Campagna, 176 
Campine, 57 
Cantabrians, 167, 169 
Carcassonne Gate, 146, 

158 
Carpathian Mts., 93, 96 

103, 108, 134, 135 
Carpathos, 168 
Carrara, 176 
Carso, 144 
Carthagena, 185 
Caspian Sea, 212 
Castile, 171, 172, 183, 

185 
Catalonia, 182 
Catalonian Mts., 173 
Catalonians, 182, 185 
Catania, 194 
Caucasus Mts., 214, 

217 
Causses, 144 
Celtic Languages, 154 
Central Plateau, 140, 

143, 159, 161 
Central Race, 18 
Cernavoda, 136 
Cette, 149 



INDEX 

Cevennes, 143 
Champagne, 142 
Charleroi, 163 
Charlottenburg, 87 
Chemnitz, 86 
Cherbourg, 157 
Christiania, 46 
Christiania Fiord, 27 
Coblentz, 61 
Colmar, 138 
Cologne, 61, 78, 87 
Como L., 100 
Congo Region, 166 
Constantinople, 203, 

209, 210 
Constantsa, 136 
Copenhagen, 36, 39, 40 
Cordoba, 184 
Cordova. See Cordoba 
Corsica, 155, 167, 177 
Cossacks, 223, 229 
Courtrai, 64 
Cracow, 93 
Crau, 149 
Crete, 168 
Crimean Mts., 214, 

217 
Croats, 20, 22, 198, 205 
Czecho- Slovakia, 116, 

121-128 
Czechs, 19, 21, 117, 

122-128 

Dal R., 28, 41, 42 
Dalmatia, 178,191,206 
Dannemora, 42 
Danube R., 64, 105, 

106, 107, 108, 122, 
127, 130, 135, 181, 
206 

Danzig, 83, 95 
Dardanelles, 209 
Debreczen, 130 
Delft, 79 
Denmark, 33-3S> 36, 

37-40, 83 
Dieppe, 157 
Dijon, 158 
Dnieper R., 212, 214, 

227 
Dniester R., 89, 93, 

107, 214 
Dobruja, 108, 133 



Dogger Bank, 59 

Don R., 212, 214 

Donetz Coalfield, 226 

Donetz R., 212 

Dora Baltea R., 99 

Dora Riparia R., 99 

Dordogne R., 145 

Dortmund, 86 

Dortmund-Emden, 60 

Douro R., 170, 188, 
189 

Drave R., 100, 102, 
107 

Dresden, 86, 87 

Drin R., 179 

Duisberg, 62, 86 

Diina R. See Dvina 

Dunkerque. See Dun- 
kirk 

Dunkirk, 157 

Durance R., 147 

Durazzo, 205 

Diisseldorf, 86 

Dutch, 73 

Dvina R., 211 



East Galicia, 90, 94 
East Prussia, 84 
Ebro R., 170, 173 
Ebro Valley, 186 
Eger, 124, 125, 126 
Eifel, 61, 62 
Eipel R., 104 
Eisack. See Isarco 
Eisenerz, 102, 120 
Ekaterinoslav, 214, 226 
Elba L, 178, 193 
Elbe R., 52, 54, 55, 

87, 88, 124, 127 
Elberfeld, 86 
Elbruz Mt., 215 
Emden, 87 
Ems R., 60 
Enns R., 102, 120 
Epernay, 141 
Erz Gebirge, 65, 86, 

126 
Esbjerg, 39 
Essen, 86 
Esthonia, 217-222 
Ests, 21, 218 
Etna Mt., 175 



INDEX 



245 



Falun, 41 

Faroes, 36 

Fichtel Gebirge, 65 

Finland, 29-33, 47-5° 

Finns, 21, 47 

Fiume, 102, 191, 192, 

201, 208 
Flanders, 163 
Flemings, 162 
Florence, 190 
Fold Mts., 97 
France, i 37-151, 153- 

161 
Franconian Jura, 64 
Frankfurt-on-Main, 88 
Frisian I., 57 
Fiinfkirchen. See Pecs 

Galatz, 107 
Galicia (Poland), 90 
Galicia (Spain), 169 
Garonne Basin, 145 
Garonne R., 145 
Geest, 57, 76 
Gellivaare, 42 
Geneva, no, 112, 113 
Genoa, 190, 194 
Georgia, 233 
Germany, 80-89, 160 
Germans, 132 
Germans (in Hungary), 

129 
Ghent, 164, 165 
Gibraltar, 187 
Gibraltar Str., 168, 

174 

Gibraltar Rock, 174 

Gijon, 185 

Giovi Pass, 177, 194 

Gironde R., 145 

Glaciation. See Ice- 
Sheet 

Glommen R., 27, 44 

Glommen V., 46 

Gorlitz, 86 

Gota R., 28, 43 

Goteborg, 43 

Gothenburg. See 

Goteborg 

Granada, 173, 183 

Graz, 102, 120 

Great St, Bernard, P., 
99 



Greece, 200, 203 
Greek Church, 23 
Greeks, 195 
Greenland, 36 
Grenoble, 147 
Guadalquiver R., 171, 

186 
Guadiana R., 170, 172 
Guernsey, 143 

Haarlem, 75 

Haffs, 56 

Hague, 73, 79 

Hamburg, 55, 85, 87 

Hardanger Fiord, 46 

Harz Mts., 68 

Havre, 157 

Helsingfors, 50 

Herzogovina, 116 

High Fens, 57, 76 

Holland, 73-80 

Huertas, 173 

Huelva, 186 

Hungarian Ore Mts., 
104, 126 

Hungarian Plains, 105 

Hungarians. »See Mag- 
yars 

Hungary, 114, 115, 
1 28-1 3 1 

Iberian Peninsula, 169, 

174 
Iberian Mts., 170 
Iberians, 182 
Ice-Sheet, 30-33, 52, 

65, 211, 212 
Iceland, 36 

Illyrian Alps, 102, 168 
Imatra Falls, 49 
Inn R., 100, 102 
Innsbruck, 100 
Iron Gates, 105, 106 
Isares R., 100 
Isere R., 99, 100, 147 
Istria, 191 
Italian Peninsula, 175- 

177 
Italians, 208 
Italy, 190-195 

Jalon R., 170, 186 
Jersey, 143 



Jews, 23, 24, 91, 92, 

133, 223, 227 
Jotun Fjeld, 26 
Jucar R., 170 
Jugo-Slavia, 128, 129, 

179, 192, 205-208 
Jugo-Slavs, 20, 132, 

192, 198 
Jura Mts., 99, 147 
Jura Valley, no 
Jutland, 34-35 

Kalmuck, 228 

Karlsbad, 67 

Karlsruhe, 87 

Karst, 145 

Kasehau. See Kosice 

Kassa. See Kosice 

Kattegat Str., 28, 43 

Kazan, 233 

Kazbek Mt., 215 

Kempenland, 57, 76 

Kharkov, 227 

Kherson, 227 

Kiel, 87 

Kiel Canal, 40 

Kiev, 214, 222, 227, 
228 

Kirghiz, 21, 228 

Klagenfurt, 100, 121 

Klausenburg. See 

Kolozsvar 

Koln. See Cologne 

Kolozsvar, 133 

Konigsberg, 87 

Konigshiitte, 93 

Koros R., 105, 133 

Kosice, 126 

Krefeld, 86 

Krivoy-Rog, 226 

Kronstadt. See Brasso 

Kustenje. See Con- 
stantsa 

Labe, 124 

Ladoga L., 211 

La Futa P., 177, 194 

Laibach. See Ljubl- 
jana 

La Mancha, 172 

Landes, 145 

Langres, Plateau, 140, 
148, 157 



246 



INDEX 



Lapp! and, 216 
Lapps, 20, 29 
Latvia, 217-222 
Latvis. See Letts 
League of Nations, i, 
12-25,85,88,91,95, 

113, 239 
Le Creusot, 145, 159 
Leignitz, 86 
Leipzig, 86 
Lek R., 60 
Lemburg, 93 
Letts, 21, 218 
Libau, 221 
Liege, 138, 163 
Lille, 158 
Linares, 186 
Linz, 121 
Lion Gulf, 149 
Lipari Isles, 176 
Lisbon, 189 
Lithuania, 84, 217-222 
Lithuanians, 21, 218 
Little Carpathian Mts., 

103 
Little St. Bernard P., 

100 
Ljubljana, 102, 207 
Lodz, 94 
Loess, 56, 213 
Lofoten L, 26 
Loire, 138-140, 143 
Lombardy, 174, 175, 

192 
Lorraine, 81, 83, 85, 

138, 156, 159 
Lucerne L., 100, 113 
Lulea R., 27, 42 
Liineburger Heide, 57 
Luxembourg, 137, 163 
Lwow. See Lemburg 
Lyons, 148, 150, 157, 

159 

Maas, 58, 60, 76, 78 
Maastricht, 79 
Macedonia, 180, 201 
Madeira, 188 
Maggiore L., 100 
Magyars, 21, 114, 122, 

123, 131, 132, 206, 

208 
Main, 64 



Mainz, 62, 64, 88 
Malaga, 173 
Malar L., 28, 43 
Malines. See Mechlin 
Malmo, 40 
Malta, 177 

Mannheim, 63, 64, 88 
Marburg, 102 
March. See Morava 
Marienbad, 67 
Maritza R., 180, 181, 

200, 203 
Marmora Sea, 209 
Maros R., 105, 133 
Marseilles, 148, 149, 

ISO, 157, 159 
Massa, 176 
Matra Mts., 106, 129, 

130 
Mechlin, 164 
Mediterranean climate, 

Mediterranean race, 18, 
19, 129-131 

Mediterranean Sea, 168 

Mediterranean vegeta- 
tion, 151 

Meissen, 86 

Memel, 84, 221 

Memel R. See 

Nieman R. 

Mentone, 148 

Meseta, 170, 172 

Messina, 194 

Messina Str., 175 

Metz, 159 

Meuse R., 138, 163 

Midi, 149 

Milan, 100, 193, 194 

Minho R., 170 

Moldavia, 107, 1 31-136 

Moldaw. See Vltava 

Monaco, 148 

Monastir, 207 

Mons, 163 

Mont Blanc, 147 

Montenegrins, 199 

Montenegro, 199, 200, 
206 

Moors, 183 

Morava R., 166, 103, 
179, 180 

Moravia, 103, 121 



Moravian Gate, 120, 

127 
Moscow, 215, 216, 228, 

231, 233 
Mosel, 61, 64, 85, 137, 

138, 159 
Moselle. See Mosel 
Mount Cenis P., 99 
Mt. Gargano, 176 
Mulhouse, 138, 158 
Miinchen. See Munich 
Munich, 87, 100 
Mur R., 100, 120 
Murcia, 173, 175, 185 
Murmansk, 27, 216 
Miirz R., 102 
Muscovy, 228 

Namur, 138, 163 
Nancy, 159 
Nantes, 157 
Naples, 193, 194 
Naples Bay, 176 
Narenta R., 178, 179 
Narvik, 42 
Neckar R., 64 
Netherlands, 73-80, 

191 
Netze R., 54, 89 
Neva R., 211, 228 
Nice, 148 
Nieman R., 55, 84, 88, 

89, 211 
Nikolaiev, 226, 227 
Nish, 179 
Nishava R., 180 
Normandy, 143 
Normans, 45, 143 
Norrland, 41 
North Holland, 73 
North Holland C, 79 
North Sea, 59 
Northern Dvina R., 

213 
Northern Race, 18, 19 
Norway, 36, 43-46 

Odde, 46 

Oder R., 54, 55, 88, 

127 
Odessa, 227 
Ofoten Fiord, 27, 42 
Olt R., 105, 133 



INDEX 



247 



Oporto, 188, 189 
Oppeln, 84 
Orleans, 139 
Ostend, 165 
Oviedo, 185 

Palermo, 194 

Paris, 138, 150, 15s, 

157 
Paris Basin, 138 
Pecs, 130 
Perm, 214, 233 
Petchora R., 213 
Petrograd, 211, 228, 

231, 233 
Philippopolis, 180, 209 
Pilsen. See Plzen 
Pindus Range, 179 
Piraeus, 204 
Ploesci. See Ploesti 
Ploesti, 134 
Plzen, 125, 126 
Po R., 99, 175 
Poitou Gate, 138, 158 
Poland, 83, 89-95 
Polders, 74 
Poles, 19, 20, 227 
Pontine Marshes, 176 
Portugal, 187-189 
Portuguese Language, 

183 

Posen, 83 

Prague. See Praha 

Praha, 125, 127 

Pressburg. See Bratis- 
lava 

Pripet Marsh, 216 

Pripet R., 94, 212 

Prussia, 80, 86 

Pruth R., 107 

Pusstas, 107 

Pyrenees Mts., 146 

Ragusa, 199 

Reims, 141, 158 

Reuss R., 1 00 

Reval, 221 

Rheims. See Reims 

Rhine Massif, 6i 

Rhine R., 57, 60, 61, 
63, 73, 78, 86, 87, 
88,100,111,137, 138 

Rhodes, 168 



Rhodope Mts., 180 
Rhone-Saone V., 99, 

148, 149, 158 
Rhone R., 99, 147, 148, 

149, 157, 158 
Rienz, 100 
Riga, 221 

Rio Tinto, 186 
Riviera, 148 
Romance Languages, 22 
Rome, 194 
Roros, 44 

Rostof-on-Don, 212 
Rotterdam, 73, 78 
Roubaix, 158 
Rouen, 157 
Ruhr R., 62, 86 
Rumania, 22, 1 31-136 
Rumanian Plains, 107 
Rumanians, 131 
Ruschuk, 209 
Russia, 228-236 
Russians (Great), 20, 

21, 133, 222, 223, 

224, 227, 228 
Russians (Little), 20, 

222 
Russians (White), 20, 91 
Ruthenia, 1 21-128 
Ruthenians, 20, 91, 94, 

122-128, 132 

Saar, 64, 84, 138, 160 
Saima L., 49 
St. Etienne, 145, 159 
St. Gotthard Tunnel, 

100 
St. Nazaire, 157 
St. Petersburg. See 

Petrograd 
St. Vincent, 170 
Sajo R., 104 
Salonika, 201, 204 
Salonika Gulf, 179 
Salzach R., 102 
Salzburg, 120 
Samara R., 233 
Sambre R. 138, 163 
Santander, 185 
Saone R., 148 
Saragossa. See Zara- 

goza 
Sarajevo, i, 179, 207 



S 



Saratov, 214, 233 
Sardinia, 167, 177, 193 
Sark, 143 
Sarre. See Saar 
Save R., 102, 107, 179, 

206 
Saverne, Col de, 63, 

157 
Saxons, 60, 132 
Saxony, 66, 86, 87 
Scandinavian Penin- 
sula, 25-35 
Scandinavian Peoples, 

35737 
Scania, 40 
Schelde R., 60, 137, 

165, 
Scutari, 205 
Seeland. See Zealand 
Seine R., 138-141 
Semmering P., 102 
Serbia, 199 
Serbs, 20, 21, 22, 198, 

205 
Sereth R., 107 
Setubal, 189 
Seville, 186 
Shar Dagh, 179 
Siberia, 228 
Sicily, 175, 177, 194, 

.195 
Sierra de Guadarrama, 

171 
Sierra Morena, 171, 

172, 186 
Sierra Nevada, 167, 

172, 173, 185 
Silesia, 67, 84, 86, 121 
Simplon Tunnel, 100 
Sisak, 208 
Skager Rak, 27 
Skoplie. See Uskub 
Slavonic Languages, 21 
Slavs, 19 
Slesvig, 83 
Slovakia, 1 21-128 
Slovaks, 19, 22, 122- 

128 
Slovenes, 20, 198, 205 
Sofia, 180, 182, 209 
Sogne Fiord, 26 
Sound Str., 40 
South Holland, 73 



248 



INDEX 



Soviet System, 234 
Spain, 182-187 
Spalato, 206 
Spanish Language, 183, 

185 
SplLigen P., 100 
Spree R., 55 
Steppe Zone, 213, 216 
Stettin, 87 
Steyr, 120 
Stockholm, 43 
Strasbourg, 63, 138, 

157 
Stromboli, 175 
Struma R., 180 
Stuttgart, 87 
Sudetas Mts., 66, 67, 

126 
Sulina, 135 
Swabian Jura, 64 
Sweden, 36, 40-43 
Switzerland, 103, 108- 

113 

Szamos R., 105, 133 
Szeged, 130 
Szegedin. See Szeged 

Tagus R., 170, 189 
Tammerfors, 49 
Tamow, 93 
Tatars, 21, 222, 228 
Tatra, High, 104 
Tatra Low, 104 
Terneuzen, 165 
Teschen, 126 
Teutonic Knights, 218 
Teutonic Languages, 22 
Thessaly, 180 
Thiess R. See Tisza R. 
Thrace, 181 
Thuringian Forest, 68 
Tiber R., 176, 177 
Tirol, 118 



Tisza R., 104, 107, 123, 

130 
Toce V,, 100 
Tokay, 129 
Toledo Mts., 171 
Tornea R., 27, 42 
Toulon, 157 
Toulouse, 146 
Tournai, 164 
Transylvania, 105, 131- 

136 
Transylvanian Alps, 

104, 105, 107, 133, 

134, 13s 
Trent, 100, 114 
Trentino, 114 
Trieste, 100, 191, 201 
Trondhjem, 46 
Trondhjem Fiord, 26, 

27 
Tula, 214, 233 
Tundja V., 208 
Tundja R., 181 
Tundra, 29, 216 
Turin, 99, 194 
Turkey, 209 
Turks, 21, 133, 199 
Tuscany, 176 
Tyrrhenian Sea, 175, 

177 



Ugro-Finns, 20 
Ukranians, 20, 91, 133, 

222 
Ukraine, 211, 213, 214, 

216, 222-227 
Upper Silesia, 67, 84, 

94 
Ural Mts., 214 
Uskub, 201, 207 
Utrecht, 79 



Valdai Hills, 211 
Valencia, 173. 185 
Vardar R., 179, 180, 

201, 204 
Varna, 209 
Vener L., 28, 42 
Venice, 190, 191, 193, 

194 
Verona, 100, 194 
Vesuvius Mt., 176 
Vienna, 102, 118, 128 
Vienna Basin, 103 
Vikings, 45 
Vistula R., 54, 55, 70, 

89, 93, 94 
Vlachs, 131, 198 
Vltava, 124, 127 
Volga R., 212, 214, 

228, 233 
Vosges Mts., 63, 137, 

158 
Vuoksen R,, 49 

Waal, 60 

Wallachian, 107, 131- 

136 
Walloons, 162 
Warsaw, 94 
Warthe R., 54, 89 
Weser R., 55, 60 
Westphalia, 62 
Wurttemberg, 87 

Zagreb, 102, 206, 207 
Zara, 192 
Zaragoza, 186 
Zealand I. See See- 
land 
Zeebrugge, 165 
Zuider Zee, 57, 58, 74, 

78 
Zurich, III, 113 
Zwickau, 86 



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